


And in the Morning Head for Home

by SinOfPride



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-31 04:07:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinOfPride/pseuds/SinOfPride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sliding down into a dream was always disorienting, but this time Arthur knew something had gone wrong. He couldn't shake off the knowledge that there was something he'd forgotten, something his own mind didn't want him to remember. Being grounded in reality had always defined Arthur but when denial has run its course, dreams could give him a way out he'd never needed before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And in the Morning Head for Home

**Author's Note:**

> [You can also read this story on Livejournal](http://sin-of-pride.livejournal.com/139353.html#cutid1)
> 
> * * *
> 
>   _Trust the Dreams, for in them is hidden The Gate to Eternity_  
>  -Kahil Gibran
> 
>  

Arthur opened his eyes to darkness and a burst of sudden, blinding pain.

Ears ringing with the echo of a discharge, it only took him a second to recognize the stabbing agony of a bullet wound through his middle. His breath froze in his chest with the flood of pain, a minute of stillness that let him hear it; steps were approaching him, heavy work boots stepping through broken glass from his left side.

Arthur fought his disorientation, raising his head in time to look into the face of his would-be assassin. A grim forty something man met his gaze calmly, already raising his gun for the coup de grace.

A shot echoed off the walls as the man pulled the trigger without hesitation, making Arthur think _professional_ even as he was rolling away, directly onto a pile of garbage that smelled like piss. He had no time to be disgusted, quickly crawling through it to seek some cover behind the toppled dumpster a few feet away.

Brick fragments rained down on him as Arthur threw himself forward, two bullets imbedding themselves in the wall above his head. He brushed them off and turned on his side to return fire, squinting in the dim light to make out his attacker.

Arthur’s position was dreadful but his warning shot was enough to force the man to duck and lose his sights on Arthur’s location. Breathing through the pain of moving, Arthur adjusted the switch on his Glock to three round bursts and fired, clipping the man’s shooting arm.

“Fuck!” Arthur heard and used the sound to improve his aim. Three shots later and he’d finally dropped the man, leaving him twitching on the ground with half his face blown off. His wet breathing filled the air, a wheezing sound that went on for a few long seconds before tapering off to nothing.

The silence that followed was deafening. Arthur’s head rang with the reverberations of close-range fire and dizziness made his eyes close despite knowing better.

 _Get up_ he told himself, aware his little gun battle would draw attention, but he couldn’t even breathe. Though he hadn’t quite lowered his weapon, he was an easy target should another attacker show up. Thankfully, none did.

He was in an alley, dirty and narrow, lit in places by the yellow streetlights around the corner. The only windows facing it were high-up and dark. Wary, Arthur kept an eye out for moving shadows as he struggled to sit up, pain exploding through his ribs in a ruthless staccato rhythm.

There were several bodies littering the ground around him in sprawling shapes, four men in total, all dead. What he could see of their features was unremarkable; Arthur didn’t recognize any of them.

Arthur also didn’t remember how he’d gotten to this place.

Long engrained habit had Arthur checking his Glock’s magazine instead of dwelling on his confusion and seeing only two bullets, he concentrated on reloading, fumbling through the familiar motions of finding a fresh mag and sliding it in place. His double vision and clammy hands made the movements clumsy and Arthur secured the safety with a curse, lowering the gun to his lap.

Only then did Arthur let himself look down and assess the damage he’d taken.

One bullet wound, shot at close-range, had left what would be an unimpressive hole in his abdomen if not for the blood leaking steadily from the wound.

Arthur grimaced at the sight. He’d have happily gone the rest of his life without remembering how much getting shot _fucking hurt_. Every movement pulled on affected muscles and he couldn’t quite drag air in. Given his luck so far, the bullet was probably lodged against his ribs and he could only hope his lung wasn’t compromised.

He couldn’t see any arterial spray or bubbles of air in the wound, which was good. But he had to move, immediately, before shock set in.

He ground his teeth against a moan when he tried to stand. Someone might as well have been trying to saw him in two by how it felt like to move. But he dragged himself up by degrees, digging his nails into the brick wall to stay upright. Only when he raised his head and squinted in the dim light did the concussion become glaringly evident.

A pinprick of agony behind his eyes swelled up into full-blown nausea before he could blink, doubling him back over and bringing up what felt like every bite he’d had since New Years.

By the time he’d finished throwing up, Arthur was well and truly sick of the whole situation.

“Fuck,” he bit out, spitting on the ground and straightening as best as he could, leaning against the wall like a drunk.

Every step made him breathless, but he managed to stumble for a few feet before he had to stop and throw up again, almost but not quite on his shoes. Staying upright through sheer doggedness, he waited for his surroundings to settle before starting forward again, moving laboriously toward the end of the alley.

Where the hell was he? What had happened?

He knew he’d been working a job somewhere in Europe, but where? Georgia? Serbia? Cobb had called him, he remembered that much, but the details were slipping through the sieve of his memory. Hadn’t Cobb retired at some point?

Only then did it hit Arthur that he could be in a dream. He suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at himself for not thinking of it earlier.

It took some work, but Arthur managed to slowly shift his body around to lean his back and not his side against the wall. Hands shaking, he dug through his front pants pocket for his die, needing confirmation. It wouldn’t do to shoot himself in the head in reality.

“Arthur!” called an instantly familiar voice.

Running footsteps followed, a sound that made him raise his head despite the lingering nausea. His grip on his gun tightened and he left his die in his pocket, wary.

“Arthur! Where the hell are you?” called the man, low and rapidly approaching.

Arthur didn’t have enough breath left to shout an answer, but he didn’t have to. Cobb was already rounding the corner into the alley, skidding to a startled halt at the scene that greeted him.

Arthur couldn’t help a sarcastic little wave when Cobb finally lifted his eyes from the bodies on the ground to set them on him.

Cobb eyes’ briefly widened, then settled back into a determined glare as he ran to Arthur’s side, fingers efficiently examining him. Arthur endured it with little grace despite knowing the overprotective act was for once actually justified.

“Shit. How could you get hurt so fast?” Cobb said, sounding surprised. Arthur managed a glare, but he didn’t pull away when Cobb carefully felt along his side. Ironically, his passivity seemed to alarm Cobb more than anything else.

“Hey, talk to me. Where were you hit?” Cobb said, sounding pained. His face was way too close to Arthur’s, making it hard to focus. “How bad?”

Before he could answer, Cobb’s fingers unerringly found Arthur’s bleeding wound, probing around it with care that didn’t really spare Arthur any misery. His vest and shirt were already soaked bright red and soon so were Cobb’s hands.

“Not great,” Arthur conceded, grimacing at his own hoarse voice. He pushed Cobb away with some difficulty, the movement sending little shocks of pain through his muscles. The effort left him winded. Cobb’s face was white as he checked Arthur’s sluggish pulse, seeming more worried than Arthur thought was necessary.

“Fuck. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” Cobb said, voice tense. “You’re losing too much blood.”

“My apologies,” Arthur answered dryly, relief of seeing Cobb fading enough to make him need answers. He opened his mouth to ask where they were, but Cobb didn’t even look at his face, stepping forward and putting pressure on Arthur’s wound to slow the bleeding.

The agony of that touch stole Arthur’s breath again, left him leaning against Cobb’s shoulder despite his best efforts to straighten up. He had to forcibly blink away the spots from his vision, clinging to consciousness through the skin of his teeth.

“That bad, huh?” Cobb said against his ear, voice rueful. Arthur tried to hit him on the shoulder but his fingers wouldn’t unclench from the collar of Cobb’s shirt.

“Fuck off,” he said instead, felt the breath from Cobb’s tense laugh against his neck.

“Are we pulling the plug then?” Cobb asked, a routine question when one of them got incapacitated in reality. Momentarily reassured by the familiarity, Arthur shook his head and pulled away from Cobb to stand mostly under his own power. Cobb looked unconvinced, gaze still on Arthur’s bloodied clothes.

“It’s manageable,” Arthur said, stubbornness winning out. He straightened up with exaggerated care, met Cobb’s assessing gaze with a nod. “I’ve had worse.”

Cobb didn’t need to know that, while true, he also hadn’t been expected to keep functioning through those injuries.

“Bullshit,” Cobb said, but his gaze was already trained over Arthur’s shoulder. “We’re running behind schedule as it is, are you sure you can carry on? I could try to pull off the job without you.”

Yeah, that always worked out great.

“Not quitting,” Arthur gritted out, dragging Cobb’s eyes back to his. The job might be a blur in his mind, but Arthur could handle himself, even injured. He was still sore over his fuck-up with Fischer’s militarization and Arthur couldn’t stand to feel incompetent. “Let’s go. Someone will have heard the shots.”

“Not likely, not tonight.” Cobb said, but didn’t elaborate. He studied Arthur’s features closely, scanning for signs of weakness. Arthur didn’t show him any beyond the obvious. “If you’re sure, let’s get to it then.”

Arthur nodded, hiding a grimace. Re-holstering his gun at his waistband was a bitch with his wound, but he managed it. He felt Cobb rearranging him so Arthur could lean against his left shoulder, arm thrown over Cobb’s shoulders. It hurt. The pain drew Arthur’s mind away from their job and into the present, suddenly unsure.

“My die,” Arthur said. He hadn’t checked it yet.

“Inside,” Cobb said and started dragging him toward a door he’d been staring at before. _Salida_ read the broken sign over it, hanging crooked over their heads as Cobb laboriously maneuvered them inside to a darkened hallway with numbered doors, where the bustle of people could be heard at a distance. Words in multiple languages reached Arthur’s ears but he was too tired to pay much attention.

Cobb helped him lean against a wall long enough to struggle out of his own dark coat and set it around Arthur in a half-assed attempt to cover up the blood soaking his clothes.

“Smooth,” Arthur couldn’t help muttering when Cobb heaved him closer again, felt Cobb’s hold on him tighten a little in warning. Then they were moving, Cobb mostly dragging him while Arthur concentrated on breathing.

Twists and turns took them down more hallways that were increasingly crowded and lit up with fluorescent bulbs that stung Arthur’s eyes. The further they went, the more familiar the details were. Arthur looked up long enough to recognize the props and mirrors lining some of the rooms they passed by, a bustle of Spanish and Catalan shouts and directions surrounding them in a chaos of people wearing headsets and fiddling with lighting equipment. Some people gave them odd looks as they moved, but the majority ignored them as they remained immersed in their tasks.

When they passed by a beautiful brunette in period clothing who was rehearsing lines, their current location clicked into place.

Tivoli Theatre in Barcelona.

A theatre downtown where rich British CEO George Nettle never missed an opening night of Calderon de la Barca’s La Vida Es Sueño on his annual vacation with his Spanish mistress of the month. Nettle had the fortunate --for them--habit of buying out a whole section of the theatre’s second floor to guarantee his privacy.

That didn’t explain the men in the alley, though. Arthur remembered being in charge of holding back Nettle’s security while Cobb acted as a lookout; it’d be a bodyguard or two, they’d agreed. Those men outside had looked like a professional hit team, not the crowd that the old-fashioned Nettle would ever associate with.

“Do you know who was-” Arthur started to ask, but was interrupted by a cough that almost doubled him over. It was hard to stop the spasms despite the pain they caused and Arthur could taste a hint of blood at the back of his throat the longer the fit lasted.

He leaned against Cobb’s shoulder to muffle the sounds he was making, feeling his friend’s hold on him tighten almost painfully.

When Arthur looked up again, two people in the doorway of a dressing room were staring at him, looking worried. The hallway around them had gone quieter, and Arthur felt uncomfortable with the intensity of their scrutiny.

“That’s not right,” an older woman said with a posh British accent, stepping forward and stretching out a hand as if to touch Arthur’s face. “You’re not all right at all, dear.”

The man at her side didn’t say anything but he seemed almost scared, studying Arthur too closely for comfort.

“Just his asthma acting up,” Dom said breezily, dragging Arthur forward again, away from her touch and their tense stares. “I’m taking him to lie down, he’ll be fine when his meds kick in.”

Arthur felt their stare on the back of his neck but the couple didn’t say anything or try to stop them. Even so, Arthur only relaxed when Dom managed to get them around the next corner.

“Who was after us?” Arthur finally managed to ask.

He looked up to see Cobb’s face go tight with a deep, unfamiliar anger. The worry and fear lurking in his eyes when he met Arthur’s gaze were comfortingly familiar, a left-over memory of how young he’d been when he’d first met Cobb, how he’d never stopped seeing that kid in him whenever Arthur got hurt. The fury that accompanied it though, that was worrying.

Why couldn’t Arthur just remember what happened?

“Cobol Engineering tracked us down,” Cobb said, actually stopping and turning to study Arthur when he did.

Arthur blinked, then nodded carefully. It made sense. They had been gunning for them both since they’d failed the job with Saito and weren’t the sort to let things go. Arthur had taken to planning their jobs around Cobol’s reach despite Saito’s implied protection, but a multinational could hide their tracks better than most and it wasn’t unlikely they had more agents on the ground than Arthur had accounted for.

“This one’s on me,” Cobb said, cutting neatly into Arthur’s thoughts. He didn’t look at Arthur when he spoke, starting to move them forward again, but the line of his jaw was tense. Guilt was a familiar look on him. “Don’t beat yourself up, I most likely had a trail the minute I stepped out of America and I wasn’t careful enough to change identities between flights.”

“It’s fine. Dealt with it,” Arthur said shortly, because he had. The hitmen outside were dead and- agony in his middle not withstanding- they could still make a clean getaway if no others were sent to finish them off. “Job’s still good.”

“I don’t give a shit about the job,” Cobb said, but the fact he was pulling them toward Nettle’s private seats belied his words. “I shouldn’t have dragged you back into this. This job was for my benefit and you were doing fine working with other teams.”

“We’re good,” Arthur coughed, knowing he’d have been offended if Cobb had decided to call anyone else to run point for him. “Just a flesh wound,”

The old Monty Python joke was an old habit but also a test. They usually said it when they got torn apart on the job, hoping the other would shoot them back to reality and put them out of their misery. Cobb usually found some amusement from it, a reminder of watching those films with Arthur what felt like a million years ago, but his tense posture didn’t relax at hearing it now.

“Not this time,” Cobb said, voice grave. His face was set in a grimace that made Arthur sigh. He knew Cobb would have already shot him awake if it was an option.

Reality had no such easy fix.

An indistinct amount of turns and an excruciating climb up some stairs later, Cobb had them stumbling through the threshold that led into Nettle’s private seating arrangements, away from prying eyes. Arthur could already hear the actors on stage.

When Arthur finally managed to lift his head he saw their mark unconscious in his seat, the mistress they’d bribed to drug him long gone from his side. The old man was slumped back onto the headrest, his plump face lax. The sight triggered an odd sense of déjà-vu in Arthur, but there was no time to ponder on it. Judging by what he could hear of the play, they were behind schedule if they wanted Nettle to wake up before the end.

Cobb didn’t waste time, carefully lowering Arthur into a seat next to the mark and kneeling to check on his wounds. He resisted all Arthur’s attempts to brush him off, fingers pushing aside the coat that covered the worst of it.

“Can you really do this?” Cobb asked at length, looking up to meet Arthur’s eyes. His face was pale and sad, like he was horrified he had to ask this of Arthur.

Really, it was ridiculous how the man absorbed guilt like a sponge. Arthur was Cobb’s point man, it was his _job_ to get hurt ahead of anyone else. A gut shot wasn’t immediately fatal, even if his lungs had been involved; Arthur could get medical attention once they were out of here.

But Cobb wouldn’t know logic if it kicked him in the face and Arthur knew he was already berating himself for not having gotten both of them out of here instead of pushing to complete the job.

“You’re ridiculous,” Arthur told Cobb, trying to ignore how hard it was to get the words out. Cobb didn’t relent with his stare, his hand gripping Arthur’s arm tightly.

On stage, Segismundo mused on the certainty of the reality he stood on. _¿Que quizá soñando estoy, aunque despierto me veo?_ Arthur heard as he met Cobb’s eyes. They had a short window before the intermission that came prior to the third act. What remained of Nettle’s security would most likely check on them by then.

“Of course I can do this,” Arthur said, sounding certain, feeling slightly less so.

The pain was bad; his head was spinning from a dangerous mix of blood-loss and a serious concussion and breathing was getting harder. All together, Arthur knew he’d be out of commission for a while after this but he’d been shot enough times to think he’d be ok. The pain would lessen in the dream and bleeding out took longer than the fifteen minutes they’d need. He trusted Cobb to take care of things after they woke.

“Arthur,” Cobb said, sounding serious and wary. Arthur instinctively tried to sit up straighter, projecting a self-possession he didn’t currently feel. “Are you sure?”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Cobb said. Arthur stared at him, bewildered, but Cobb went on. “It’s your decision, Arthur. You tell me no and we don’t go down, screw the job and everyone else.”

“Dom,” Arthur said, deliberately using the name he’d rarely spoken aloud after Mal’s funeral. “Let’s do this and get it over with. You know I hate unfinished business.”

Because he was looking for it, Arthur saw something shift in Cobb’s expression at his words. For a second he looked wrecked, like Arthur had said precisely the wrong thing. Arthur frowned, concerned, but Cobb didn’t give him time to react.

Before Arthur could draw back, Cobb’s hand reached out to graze his cheek in a startlingly gentle touch. His fingers felt warm against Arthur’s chilled flesh as they moved up to his hairline. The moment seemed to stretch in an awkward pause as they stared at each other, frozen.

Arthur blinked, tried to think of what to say, but when Cobb’s fingers withdrew they were stained bright red with fresh blood, like Cobb had meant to wipe the blood away from the start. It was an excuse they could both grasp and Arthur let it go without commenting.

“I’ll be fine, Dom,” Arthur said, a hollow reassurance that made Cobb’s expression cloud over, shutter itself off again behind grim determination and professionalism. 

It was a look Arthur knew well.

“Yeah,” Cobb said, just that word, like it’d been torn out of him. “Yeah, okay.”

Then he stood and turned around as he set up the PASIV device and prepared the dosage and the needles. He hooked the mark up to an IV then turned back to face him, face too grave.

Arthur briefly considered reaching for his totem, but Cobb was already setting him up with a line and the pain had only increased since Arthur had sat down. Moving around felt impossibly difficult.

“You ready to do this?” Cobb asked him, sounding more like _I don’t want you to do this_. Still, Arthur nodded and Cobb pressed the button.

He thought he felt Cobb’s hand grab his for an instant. He thought he saw the mark move behind Cobb’s back, but the Somnacin was already dragging him under and there was no time left to warn him.

 

 

 

 

Arthur opened his eyes to the sweltering heat of the desert and the unmistakable taste of blood in his mouth.

“Barnet?” a soft voice whispered by his ear.

Arthur ignored it, blinking at what he recognized as the canvas ceiling of a field hospital.

Thinking felt like he was pushing through molasses, logic slow to wake. As he became accustomed to the noise that surrounded him, he began to make out individual cries and medical jargon Arthur half-remembered from a lifetime ago.

From one second to the next, Arthur knew he was in Iraq; the memory was too vivid, the feel of the country too engraved in him to be mistaken for any other place.

And just like that, he knew this was a dream he didn’t want to be in.

The use of his real surname gave Arthur pause but it was easily acquired information. It gave him nothing to work with, nothing to clue him into what had landed him in this particular brand of hell.

This was not a trip down memory lane Arthur had ever wanted to indulge in.

When enough of his faculties were back online, he blinked sweat from his eyes and sat up with a staggering heave, his ribs protesting violently at the move.

“Watch it, Chief!” cried the voice and then there were hands on him, gently keeping him still.

Arthur blinked up at a face he thought he should recall, studying too-wide teeth, freckles and bags under tired green eyes until recognition dawned.

Mitchell Thomas.

He’d been a private in Arthur’s field unit, two years his junior, who always was a shitty shot but made a decent medic.

Thomas smiled despite the bandage wrapped around his head, proof of his own injuries. He was peering at him with concern, asking Arthur to try and stay calm and could he remember what had happened?

Arthur could remember the most important fact, even if his head felt stuffed with cotton: Mitchell Thomas had been dead for at least seven years. The bandage on his head hadn’t stopped the brain hemorrhage that had eventually killed him, about three weeks after the memory Arthur was currently reliving.

“I remember,” Arthur told Thomas’ projection, eyes already scanning the scene behind him. It was an unforgettable sort of chaos; mangled bodies laying around an infirmary tent that had been hastily set up following the ambush they’d suffered on patrol.

Even the pain he felt was familiar, shrapnel having dug bloody gouges into his skin that he still carried the scars of. It was a distant feeling, as if felt through the haze of morphine, but Arthur didn't feel drugged.

Why was he feeling phantom pain from those wounds? He wasn’t sure. His ears were ringing, much as they had back then and his temples were throbbing steadily.

Arthur ignored Thomas’ attempts at helping and straightened up to lean against the cot, inspecting himself with a kind of morbid curiosity.

He was in fatigues, of course. He could feel the weight of dog tags he hadn’t worn in years against his chest.

His hair was shorn short when he ran a hand up his head to inspect it and, sure enough, he felt the same gaping head-wound that had rendered him mostly useless for the follow-up attack his unit underwent, two days after the original ambush.

“Take it easy, Chief,” Thomas was saying. “You sure you should be up? The Sarge said he’d demote you if he caught you trying to hide how bad you’re hurt again. Not this time, he said.”

Arthur didn’t answer him like he had back then. This time he knew the Sergeant would be executed with a machete and his opinion wouldn’t matter. Instead, he inspected Thomas’ expression carefully, trying to determine if he could be talking to a forger sent to extract something.

But the too simple, earnest emotion on Thomas’ face meant he was probably a constructed projection. A memory of what the real Thomas had looked like, trying to cheer him up when Arthur woke up in agony from the shrapnel, addled and half-deaf from the explosion.

“Make it STOP!” someone was saying to his right. “Please, just- _please_ -”

In the background, someone was screaming incoherently, while someone else was sobbing in agony from burns they hadn’t had enough medicine to help with.

Easier not to put names to the voices; Arthur could remember how each of these people died and nothing he did would help them now.

Instead of dwelling on any of it, Arthur sat looking at his hands and tried to gather his scattered thoughts. He knew it was a dream and he knew it was his subconscious populating it, given the excruciating attention to detail only a memory could accomplish.

Why had he landed here, though? Had someone infiltrated his mind and designed this place for him or had he influenced the setting? To what purpose?

Why couldn’t he remember any of it? Arthur had been trained to retain vital details in dreamsharing, even under extreme conditions. This scenario shouldn't be any different.

“Chief, you should be resting,” Thomas was saying. Arthur continued to ignore him and after a moment’s contemplation, finally pushed to his feet.

Pain lit up a stinging path down his torso with a fierceness that immediately robbed him of his breath. Still, he pushed through it, determined not to be caught unawares in this place.

“I’ll be fine,” he told Thomas, shrugging him off and vaguely pointing in another direction. “Check on Bryant. I need the toilet.”

In a military camp it wasn’t hard to procure weapons. He hesitated over an M16 but a rifle wasn’t practical in a dream unless he was under heavy fire; if these were his projections, there was no immediate threat. Arthur finally decided on a smaller pistol, grabbing an M9 from the bedside of a soldier- _Olsen, dead in captivity,_ whispered a corner of his thoughts- and stumbled away from the occupied cots and medical personnel to get outside the tent.

Looking around, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. No unfamiliar faces, nothing that didn’t quite belong.

Arthur didn’t remember it being this humid back then, though. The air felt muggy, more suited to a tropical weather than the dry heat Arthur recalled, and it already had him bathed in sweat. The ground felt uneven under his feet and when he looked down he found rocks that glittered like broken glass. Someone in the background seemed to be praying in Greek.

Were those signs?

That aside, the camp stood exactly as it had, chaotic and badly defended with too many people down and much of their hardware annihilated. Two crowded Humvees had been blown up and only three of their passengers had survived, along with the rest of the convoy behind them.

It was a well known incident in Arthur’s military background, something that anyone experienced enough could dig up and recreate.

The pain Arthur felt was duller than it’d been back then, more manageable, but still impossible to ignore. He wondered if it was part of the memory, something his mind had created to make sense of being back here; or if it was a sign of what his real body was undergoing up there, wherever that was.

“Barnet!” he heard Thomas calling him, but he didn’t turn back.

He couldn’t figure out the point of being back in this place or the angle an extractor could be working. Did they want him vulnerable? Arthur couldn’t remember the reality he’d stood in before he landed here, but every step assured him that he was dreaming and the theory of an infiltration seemed more and more likely.

He couldn’t find his die in his fatigues, but he hadn’t had a totem back then. It could be a deliberate omission by whoever had gotten him here or his own subconscious could have neglected it.

Tired of wondering, Arthur stopped in a shadowed corner and raised his handgun to his temple, staring straight ahead as he readied the shot that would give him some answers.

“Reinforcements are coming,” another voice spoke up suddenly, coming from right behind him. Arthur slowly turned, coming face to face with Sergeant Miller’s grim countenance.

The older man surveyed the waste that had been made of their units with a closed-off expression. He didn’t seem aware that he was talking to a soldier with a gun to his head.

Arthur didn’t answer the man; he knew that waiting for backup had been useless. No one had come until after most of them were dead, the rest captured. Sergeant Miller had been among the former.

Arthur ignored the projection, sliding the safety off his gun and closing his eyes, ready for the kick.

“Arthur!” a familiar voice called.

Even the pain didn’t stop him from turning toward the source in a flash, muscles screaming. He saw a man descending from a weathered vehicle that had just pulled up in a cloud of dust, barely waiting for the motor to stop before heading toward Arthur at a run.

“Eames,” Arthur whispered, too quietly to be heard across the camp.

Eames looked grave, his eyes caught in Arthur’s like he didn’t dare look away.

He approached swiftly, dogtags blinking in the sun as he quickened his stride. Arthur watched him wearily, his grip on the gun tightening.

Eames was dressed as he had been back when Arthur had met him. Fatigues and dogtags and a white wife beater that had seen better days, all of which fit well with the desert they stood in. But there were glaring, definite inconsistencies.

Eames’ hair was long, as he wore it in reality. His tattoos were all there, stark against skin that was paler than it had been after months beneath unrelenting sun. He certainly didn't look twenty four anymore.

None of it fit.

Though Eames had been with the British Army when they’d met, Arthur hadn’t met him until months after this mission, in another capacity entirely. Arthur had already had his scars instead of the open wounds he now bore, for one. Back then, Arthur’s resilience after the slaughter of his unit and his experience as a captive of insurgents made him a star candidate for the military’s new off-field project in dream technology. Eames had already been using the PASIV for close to a year at that point, a trainer for the SAS.

Suspicion made Arthur feel cold.

Eames’ eyes, when Arthur was close enough to see them, didn’t have the flat countenance of most projections; his expression had too many layers, his gaze was too intent on Arthur.

The man who approached was either the real Eames or a forger, posing as him.

Whatever the case, if this was a shared dream Arthur had entered against his will either option could be potentially dangerous. Even more so, if the real Eames was behind it.

Against his better judgment, Arthur lowered his weapon to let him approach, even if he didn’t relinquish the death-hold he had on the grip. He put the safety back on, but his finger remained ready to flick it off if needed.

“Arthur,” Eames breathed when he was within reach. He sounded breathless with relief and his hands reached out as if without his permission, clutching Arthur’s shoulders in what felt like desperation. Arthur staggered slightly under the touch, caught off guard, but swiftly straightened up.

Closing his face off to hide the pain he was in wasn’t easy but Arthur had had practice.

“Fuck, Arthur. I thought I’d never find you in this place,” Eames said.

“Oh?” Arthur said, tone non-committal. He tried to seem calm but he was too aware of the pain that would hinder his motions should he need to defend himself. “Where were you?”

“Across the bloody desert, it felt like! Does your lovely mind truly need to be so accurate about my approximate location at the time of this memory?” Eames asked, all fond exasperation and Arthur felt his shoulders relax a notch despite himself.

The voice was right. The eyes were exactly right and far from cold. It felt like Eames, though he knew that didn’t mean much. But he was so fucking confused-

“How bad is the pain?” Eames asked, obviously worried.

Arthur’s focus immediately sharpened, his hold on his gun tightening painfully. How had Eames known?

“Fine,” Arthur bit out, on guard, but Eames completely ignored his body language to lean in and study his face. He smelled like sweat and looked completely out of sorts, like Arthur wasn’t used to seeing him; it was the only reason Arthur let him get so close.

“Tell me the truth, Arthur,” Eames said, voice too serious. “I need to know you can do this or I get you out right now and Cobb can bugger right off. I told you idiots this little stunt was too dangerous even before it all went sideways.”

What job is this supposed to be? Arthur wanted to ask, but he knew better than to drop his guard. He had no real reason to trust this man in front of him any more than he’d trust Mitchell Thomas’ ghost. Even if Arthur was dizzy from blood-loss, exhausted and confused, he wouldn’t let Eames- or whoever could be posing as him-see him as weak.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” was all Arthur said, watching warily as Eames’ expression seemed to tighten around something pained.

Eames looked away for a brief second, obviously biting back words. When he looked back, he seemed both heartbroken and grimly determined.

The expression was one Arthur had seen only once before, during an argument he’d rather not remember. Back then, Eames had walked out and not come back. And Arthur, though he’d wanted to, hadn’t gone after him.

“I know you think you can handle anything,” Eames said, voice devoid of emotion. “That doesn’t make it true. You’ll bloody well let me help you or I’ll shoot you again myself.”

Arthur smiled grimly, not rising to the bait of a well-worn fight.

The world of unsaid arguments behind those words was too familiar to be anything but real. For too long, their every conversation had been a field of landmines they’d mostly learned to avoid; Arthur's workaholic perfectionism, Eames' unconcerned act despite his overprotective tendencies, their mutual tendency to push the other outside their comfort zone-

Acknowledging the tired, knowing glint in Eames’ eye, Arthur finally let himself believe he stood in front of the real Eames.

Accepting the fact answered none of his questions.

“What are you doing here?” Arthur asked, not acknowledging Eames’ threat.

Eames hadn’t let go of him yet, standing with his back in a rigid line like he was trying to seem taller. The projections around them were starting to pay a little too much attention to their usual pissing contest.

“Pulling my weight, as usual,” Eames said, all puffed out offence but Arthur knew him better than that.

His look told Eames that much, judging by the softening of his expression and the sheepish turn of his mouth.

“Or I will be, right after I make sure you're able to pull yours,” Eames conceded, smiling ruefully at Arthur’s glare. “You were shot up there, Arthur. Remember? Barcelona? Do you even remember what we're doing in this place?”

He didn't, actually.

Trying to think about it brought foggy images of a job, a shootout and Cobb looking tired and torn as he hooked Arthur into a dream. The images felt hazy and distant. Had any of that been real?

Arthur knew he’d been shot. How, he wasn’t certain, but it wasn’t unheard of for pain to affect memory recall. In a dream, the pain was somewhat duller, just as he knew he’d told Cobb it would be at some point. If Arthur could just remember what the job entailed, then- wait-

“What the hell are you talking about?” Arthur said, taking a staggering step back that broke Eames’ hold on him.

His gun was pointed at Eames’ chest before he could process the intent.

“You weren’t there,” Arthur accused, fairly sure. The Nettle job had been a two person heist. “It was me and Cobb and the mark. And why would I end up here at all? Why would we need you here?”

Eames’ expression shifted, a slow twist into disbelief and concern that made Arthur’s hair stand on end and made him want to take another step back. Arthur resisted the urge, straightening up and waiting for an explanation.

“That’s it,” Eames said instead, “I’m calling this off. C’mon, I’ll wake you.”

“Eames,” Arthur said, bewildered. Eames’ expression didn’t change as he turned his back on Arthur and the projections of long-dead soldiers looking their way. The camp around them went abruptly silent.

“Come on!” Eames shouted, provocative and Arthur followed him if only to stop the projections from attacking him. Eames walked steadily away, not accommodating his stride for Arthur’s stumbling pace and leading them to the shade cast on the rocks by a parked truck. “Gimme your gun.”

“You have your own. And I’m perfectly capable of offing myself,” Arthur said, pissed off and confused. Eames conceded the point by drawing his own pistol from its holster, but he didn’t point it at Arthur. Instead he reached out with his free hand like he couldn’t help himself, making an abortive motion to check Arthur’s bandages.

Something about the look Eames was giving him, about his apparent need to constantly check on him triggered a different kind of alarm in Arthur.

Something was wrong and Eames already knew what it was. He was stalling.

“Are you going to explain or do I have to beat it out of you?” Arthur said, because that’s what it came down to, really. Eames’ pointed look at Arthur’s middle was a reminder of the stabbing pain he was trying to ignore, but Arthur didn’t back down.

“The job, Arthur,” Eames said, like it was obvious. But his expression was too blank, too careful, and it set Arthur on edge.

“We have to play into Nettle’s scenario, don’t you remember?” Eames said, voice neutral. Arthur didn’t and Eames seemed to quickly realize it, judging by the pained look that twisted his face.

“He was held hostage in Iraq while on his final tour. We agreed to make him believe he was back there and he was being rescued, before we dragged him under again with the information we need.”

Arthur felt cold. He wouldn’t agree to willingly retrace those steps, would he? Had he?

“What information?” Arthur said, bewildered. “The Nettle job wasn’t about warfare it was- it’s- codes?”

“The tunnel networks. Nettle learned their location while in captivity and was about to sell them for millions?” Eames said, almost begging him.

That actually rang a bell with Arthur. But hadn’t that been the Compton job instead? He repeated this aloud and Eames sighed, running a distressed hand through his hair as he looked out toward the slice of hell Arthur’s subconscious was projecting around them.

“Arthur,” Eames said and Arthur knew he was frustrated and scared, just from the sound of his name. So many times, he’d wished he didn’t know Eames as well as he did, if only to make it easier to pretend that Arthur didn’t care.

“This is wrong,” Arthur told him, because it was. Eames wasn’t making sense. “Whose dream is this? Those are my projections out there, not Nettle’s. And why would we need this scenario at all?”

Arthur couldn’t remember ever being this lost and the fact that it was in his own head made it all the more terrifying. He felt the loss of his totem like a phantom limb. Arthur readjusted his grip on his gun as a poor substitute, the metal made slippery with his own sweat.

Eames’ fingers tightened visibly around his own handgun, but he still made no move to shoot Arthur awake. Eames’ reluctance to wake him had to mean something important- Arthur was a liability and Eames had never had compulsions about pointing it out in the past. Why not now? What was different about this job?

Arthur tried to untangle the clues he had, tried to see it, but he could barely focus past the pulsing pain in his chest.

It was getting harder to breathe.

“Look, you’re bleeding heavily up there,” Eames said, cutting into his thoughts. “The pain must have scrambled your subconscious enough to make you influence the layout we’d agreed on.”

Something like this had actually happened to him years ago, so Arthur knew it was possible. But he couldn’t remember even the bare bones of any sort of layout, or Nettle’s file saying anything about Iraq. More than that, Arthur couldn’t conceive ever agreeing to visit even a semblance of this place or this moment in time, whatever the circumstances. No matter how hurt he was, Arthur wouldn’t have forgotten something like that.

“We need to move, Arthur,” Eames was saying. “Are you in or out?”

“You’re lying to me,” Arthur said, suddenly dead certain. He wasn’t here by his own choice.

With the realization, he felt the ground beneath his feet start to quake. Screams rose in the distance, projections starting to stir from their roles around the camp.

“No, Arthur-” Eames began to say, but Arthur wasn’t listening.

A whistling sound split the air in that second, horrifyingly familiar.

Arthur froze. Seconds dragged by as he stood, torn between horror and disbelief, muscles locking as he saw the shadows of approaching trucks coming down the mountain sides.

The whistle became an ear splitting screech, white noise in Arthur’s ears.

“MOVE!”

Eames tumbled onto him before he could react, knocking him into the rocky ground and covering him with his heavier body. A deafening blast split the air around them, fire rising up in waves from a short distance away, a wall of heat at their side.

The missile had hit one of the parked Humvees by the camp, sending two other vehicles tumbling with the shockwave. They had to scramble to their feet and run closer to the hillside to avoid the next explosion, another missile already heading in the camp’s direction.

Arthur actually recognized the owner of a severed, blackened torso when he looked up to see a body lying on the rocks, uniform torn to shreds.

“No!” Arthur shouted helplessly, lost in the screaming cacophony that swiftly surrounded them.

His nightmares had come to life everywhere around him, lit in fire and blood as he watched rebels appear as if from nowhere in a rain of machine gun fire, most aimed in the direction of the field hospital he’d just left.

A new volley of bullets and shouting split the air as more trucks came from the mountains. Another explosion rose up, somewhere behind them. Arthur dragged a ragged breath in, staring in disbelief as bodies dropped by the handful, caught unawares. A scattered return-fire begun to rise from the soldiers around them, the men scrambling to reach their weapons and settle in a position to fight back.

It wasn’t right. The raid hadn’t been until two days later. They shouldn’t be coming to capture him so soon.

“Arthur, c’mon!” Eames was shouting, dragging him back, away from the camp at full speed despite Arthur’s stumbling steps.

His chest felt bruised, his legs numb; it felt like the weight of Eames’ body had broken his ribs earlier, or maybe his injuries were just catching up.

His head felt stuffed with cotton, panic, shock and pain wreaking havoc with his thoughts. The sounds of the hell around them kept drifting in and out of his awareness like a static-filled radio station.

“Arthur! This way!” Eames shouted and Arthur followed blindly, mind whirling to catch up.

The ground shook beneath their feet. Rocks and dust rained around them as they ran, flying debris scattering everywhere when another explosion hit.

A battered truck rushed toward the camp, too close to them, moving in a cloud of dust and stones. Gleeful shouting punctuated new hails of gunfire that sent men scattering everywhere. Eames and Arthur rolled out of the way, the movements over the rocky terrain making Arthur shout in pain. Eames was cursing steadily beside him, his voice frantic and almost drowned out in the chaos.

A grenade blew up someone’s face and chest forty feet away from them as Arthur and Eames stumbled to their feet and kept on running.

Everywhere smoke was rising in thick black columns, making it almost impossible to see past their noses. Arthur clutched his gun close to his chest and tried to breathe as he scanned their surroundings for traces of more enemies coming down the hills.

They wouldn’t be getting him so easily this time, not a chance in hell.

“Arthur!” Eames shouted near his ear, words seeming to come from a million miles away. “It’s not real! Arthur, look at me, it’s not real. I’ll get you out of this place, just follow me.”

Arthur ignored his words, looking past him blankly.

The gun felt too heavy in his slippery grip. When Arthur looked down for the cause, he saw his chest was bleeding, staining his clothes a deep red. Arthur couldn’t recall being hit.

Eames didn’t wait for him to listen, grabbing him roughly and shoving him in a random direction, pushing him to run.

Running felt like someone was stabbing him repeatedly in the gut with every step, but Arthur bit his lip and bore it, stumbling without grace away from the violence. Eames didn’t let up on the pace and his grip on Arthur’s empty hand- when had that happened? - wouldn’t let him fall behind.

They ran for endless minutes, maybe hours, without exchanging a word. The world they stood in didn’t make the trek easier. The sun felt unbearably hot, a humid sort of heat exacerbated their exhaustion as hills seemed to shift beneath their feet, amplifying the distances.

Armed projections aside, the landscape was unstable everywhere; mountains in the distance seemed to collapse on themselves and human-shaped shadows moved beneath their feet, like projections that couldn’t materialize.

It felt like an eternity before the echoing explosions and screams began to get fainter, the roar of the motor vehicles chasing runaways sounding farther away. By the time he became aware of this, Arthur could barely catch his breath. His clothes felt stuck to his skin with sweat and blood. Eames wasn’t looking much better, flushed and soaked through with sweat, his lips cracked dry.

Arthur almost fell right on top of Eames when the man came to a sudden halt, but straightened himself up in time to prevent it. Eames was breathing hard, making a signal for Arthur to stay behind him.

Arthur raised his head with difficulty, blinking to clear his vision. Then he just stared in disbelief. In front of them, half-hidden down a slope in the barren landscape, stood a house Arthur had never seen before. The structure had almost seemed to come into existence out of thin air, standing lonely watch in the middle of the desert by the mountain side.

“What’s this?” Arthur asked, his voice a hoarse rasp.

Eames didn’t answer. He didn’t let go of Arthur’s clammy hand as he led him closer to the structure, his posture wary.

They slowly moved down the hillside, rocks and dust raining down as they did. Two goats standing nearby watched them approach passively, and then scampered off uphill, their hooves raising clouds of dust in their wake.

Eames moved away with a final squeeze of Arthur’s hand, fading around the corners of the building with his gun drawn- checking for inhabitants, though the place was obviously deserted. Arthur watched him do it, his own gun hanging heavy by his side.

“It’s clear!” Eames called to him a few minutes later. When Arthur failed to react he came back into view, frowning. Arthur shook off his attempt to regain a hold of his hand and followed him inside with a heavy tread.

The cool shade inside was such an unexpected relief, that Arthur had to stop and bask in it right at the main room. He heard Eames sigh and move away, the clatter of him moving things around, then his steps coming back.

When he opened his eyes, Eames was offering him a pot with murky water that Arthur didn’t hesitate to drink despite the pain in his chest.

“There’s no food,” Eames said, like it mattered. Then he sighed, ran a hand through his sweaty hair and sent it spiking in all directions. Arthur watched him, transfixed, his thoughts slow to catch up. “Shit. You’re bleeding.”

“Think I was hit,” Arthur acknowledged, frowning down at his chest. The pain was there, slowly spreading. His voice came out faint. He didn’t know how he was still standing.

“You were,” Eames told him sadly, his fingers gently probing the bloody gouge in Arthur’s chest. Arthur was pretty sure it should hurt more than it actually did. “Up there in reality, remember? It’s caught up with you, it seems.”

Arthur nodded, distracted. His mind was still stuck in the horrors he’d just relived, technicolor nightmares come to life.

“Let’s get you fixed up,” Eames was saying, leading him to sit on the room’s dusty windowsill. The glass of it had been shattered and the wooden window-frame let in the heat from outside.

Eames kept up a despairing commentary as he wrapped a cloth tightly around Arthur’s ribs, but Arthur didn’t listen. He let Eames fuss, absentmindedly studying the place’s dirt brown walls, shadowy corners and rickety wooden furniture- a table, an empty shelf, an overturned cupboard that had once been green. No chairs, no pictures on the walls, no personal items.

The blue sky was visible through the open holes in the walls and ceiling where old bombings had blown chunks off the structure. In the distance, the noise of explosions and dying comrades had faded to a dull roar.

“I’m waking you,” Eames declared suddenly, breaking a pause of silence Arthur hadn’t even noticed. “It’s not worth putting you through this.”

Eames grabbed the gun from Arthur’s hand with practiced ease despite the death-grip Arthur still had on it, looking miserable. Arthur watched him do it detachedly, trying to understand the grief in his eyes.

Then the muzzle was pointed at his forehead and Arthur had almost closed his eyes, when he finally spotted a flash of color over Eames’ shoulder.

In the house’s other room, two figures lay on the floor by the wall, unmoving. Had they been there all along? Nettle was there, hooked up to a PASIV device and wearing torn, bloodied clothing. Next to him was Cobb, also under, wearing fatigues he’d never worn in real life. Arthur stared, disbelieving, but the picture didn’t change.

Cobb hadn’t ever been a soldier. Nettle had never been a POW. But there they were, a few feet away, just as Eames had said they should be for this job Arthur couldn’t remember.

“Eames!” Arthur said, eyes wide and the gun was taken away from his face. “Wait. The job is still on, isn’t it? They’re already under!”

Eames didn’t answer, looking back toward Cobb, then back to Arthur. His expression didn’t change noticeably, but Arthur thought he seemed surprised. Was Cobb not supposed to go in before them?

“It’s fine, Arthur,” Eames said as he raised the gun again. He was lying. Arthur could always tell when he was lying and he didn’t look calm; Eames looked ragged, as if Arthur was letting him down somehow. “I’ll take care of it.”

“No. Don’t,” Arthur said firmly. He knew the tone was enough to give Eames pause. "I’m the one that has to make the call.”

The shot didn’t come and Arthur stood shakily, moving to check on Cobb and the mark. The timer on the PASIV was set for ten minutes, running down toward eight.

“Arthur,” Eames said, entreating. Arthur didn’t turn to face him.

Instead, Arthur looked out the room’s only window- a literal hole in the wall- back toward the columns of black smoke rising from an impossibly long distance. The camp they’d run from was already ablaze. Still, even at a distance, the earth shook from another explosion.

Everything looked hazy, as if seen through a veil. The landscape in the distance shifted, strange flickers that seemed to move mountains from one blink to the next. The licks of flame from the camp were faintly visible, brighter than they should be; it hurt Arthur’s eyes to look at them.

When he turned back, Eames was staring at him with an unusually open expression, unsure like Arthur had rarely ever seen him. Next to him, Cobb and the mark slumbered on with the PASIV counting down to zero.

“Let’s do this,” Arthur said. “There’s a job to finish.”

The pain was getting worse, blood already staining the makeshift bandage Eames had applied and breathing was getting harder, but the further down they went the more manageable it’d be. There was a job to be completed, obviously important enough for Eames to be reluctant to shoot him awake, for Cobb to trust him to go on with it even knowing Arthur was injured.

They were counting on Arthur to pull his weight and he’d be damned if a little pain would have him neglecting his obligations. He wasn’t Cobb and he had none of the same excuses to let his mind overwhelm him like this.

This place was a memory, an echo, and if Arthur had survived it once he could again.

“You don't have to. Arthur, are you sure-” Eames was saying, completely pointlessly.

Decision made, Arthur turned his back on the fire and nodded resolutely, moving to prepare two more Somnacin doses on the gently whirling PASIV, muscle-memory taking over the routine.

“You’ll have to lead,” Arthur admitted, though it pained him to do so.

Arthur could cover Eames’ and Cobb’s backs as he always did, but this was one job he wouldn’t be able to steer them through. Pain notwithstanding, Arthur couldn’t remember the specifics of the plan, didn’t know enough to help them obtain the information they had come here for. Two levels deep, they’d need all the stability they could afford; the least Arthur could do was keep the projections at bay.

“I know,” Eames said. His voice was almost too soft to be heard even in the relative silence of the room.

Arthur didn’t offer anything further, focusing on his task. Once everything was set he felt Eames walk up behind him, gently taking the IV lines from his shaky hand and motioning for him to lie down next to Cobb.

The dream around them shook, gravity twisting itself to bend the angle of the ground. Arthur stumbled, but Eames caught him and helped him settle down on the floor. The ground moved, rippling like water beneath them and Arthur caught Eames’ eyes. Eames looked pale and miserable, expression tight.

Neither of them said anything when cracks began appearing around the walls, slow lines drawing themselves like a spider web. Dust from the walls rained down on them as it happened, but the structure held.

He felt Eames’ eyes on his face, a familiar weight, but he shook off any lingering insecurity as he offered his arm up for the needle Eames was holding.

This had to be done. Cobb and Eames could take care of his real injuries after, when they’d gotten what they needed from the mark. They just had to be quick and the dream would hold.

“We might die in here, you realize,” Arthur said, because Eames needed to be aware of the danger. Even if Arthur’s projections didn’t tear them to pieces or if this level didn’t collapse, going two levels deep with no spotter to kick them awake and an unstable Point Man was sheer recklessness. Who was to say they’d find a way back?

Even worse-

“And you should know I don’t have my totem since I woke up here,” Arthur added, because that was important. Even discounting the possibility of Limbo, even without his debilitating injuries, Arthur could lose his grasp on reality- on sanity- and thus risk Eames’ by default. "Do you have yours?"

The information seemed to do something strange to Eames’ expression. He looked pained and torn, again biting back words Arthur was too tired to try and guess.

“Yes. Mine’s safe. Do you think you can trust me to remind you of what’s real?” Eames said, after too long a pause. Arthur nodded, not meeting Eames’ searching gaze. He couldn’t know if he’d be able to trust anyone down there, but he could try. If he’d trust in anyone, it’d be in Eames.

“We’ll have to do our best with what we have,” Eames continued, disregarding the concession. “I trust your impeccable subconscious to do its best at holding down the fort for us here.”

You shouldn’t trust me, Arthur didn’t say. Gunfire sounded in the distance while the smoke from the fires rose higher, visible over Eames’ shoulder.

Arthur knew that the horrors that littered this particular memory held no stability. War in his mind held no rationale, no logic behind the bloodshed and his projections would react accordingly. He’d almost lost himself once to this nightmarish experience and it’d taken him a long time to crawl his way back.

This time, though, he could very well drag Eames and Cobb down with him if he let himself fall. That made enough of a difference- Arthur hoped- to pull them all through it.

“I trust you,” Arthur said. It felt like something Eames should know, just in case. His voice sounded breathless and small to his own ears.

Eames looked ashen as he leaned over Arthur to set up his IV line, then his own. As he lay down next to Arthur, his eyes were an inexplicable mix of sadness and hopefulness that made Arthur want to say more.

 _You shouldn’t trust me_ , Eames’ eyes seemed to say as Arthur felt the pull of the drug pulling him under.

Stupid, Arthur wanted to say; he’d lost that battle years ago.

But the world was already fading gently around the edges and there was no time to say anything else.

 

 

 

Arthur opened his eyes to soft sheets and a pillow that smelled familiar.

It took a second before he could blink his eyes open in the early morning light. When he did, he was greeted to the sight of his bedroom in Prague and the soft breathing of someone whose arm was lying heavy around his waist.

Clothes were scattered in a heap by the bed, a pair of dress pants and a shirt Arthur didn’t own, obviously belonging to the one cradling him.

In the space of two breaths, he knew everything was wrong.

Arthur didn't need to turn around to see who was holding him. The warmth of that touch was impossible to forget, even if he hadn’t felt it in over a year.

Arthur lay still beneath that familiar hold and cursed himself when he felt warmth prick at the back of his eyelids.

He already knew he was dreaming this moment, dreaming the warmth and the touch and the perfect feeling of contentment that wanted to creep into his limbs.

Arthur just didn’t know why.

"Hey," He heard in a sleep-roughened murmur by his ear.

Arthur didn't answer and he didn't move away. He let his body melt into the one behind it, curves finding their hollows to fit against, his breathing falling into a matching pattern Arthur hadn’t yet managed to forget.

He'd sold this place in Prague after everything, though it'd been a favorite of his. The artwork now decorating this room had been sold, as well as the furniture. All the pictures, books and clothes were in storage in Germany, waiting for Arthur to collect them and find a new place to start over.

Prague held nothing but bittersweet connotations these days and walking down those streets alone was guaranteed to sadden his mood. He hadn’t been back except for work and that had been only for a day.

Arthur had always been a practical person and looking back was never a good idea, no matter how pleasant the memories.

"Good morning, darling,” that voice from the past whispered, all the tension and bite it'd held for so long leeched out of the vowels. "I already know you're awake."

No, I'm not, Arthur thought, but didn't say. When the arm around him tightened and he felt Eames kiss the back of his neck, Arthur squeezed his eyes shut and just breathed.

“Don’t pull away,” Eames said, though Arthur hadn’t. Couldn't, not yet. “I need to see you.”

Arthur sighed, a shaky sound, but he followed Eames’ lead when those arms encouraged him to turn around.

Eames’ eyes, when he met them, were soft. They drank in Arthur’s features like someone long deprived, but Arthur didn’t miss the layers of caution in his face, like Eames was waiting for the bomb to drop. Arthur knew the feeling.

His own face felt frozen, blank and stony from being denied expressing the longing he truly felt.

This close, Arthur was sharing Eames’ breath, his arms imprisoned between their bodies. He was naked underneath the sheets and so was Eames. It wasn’t a luxury they had ever indulged in outside of their home, where they’d been as safe as they could be.

It meant something, the reappearance of this closeness, this safety Arthur hadn’t found with anyone else.

“What are you doing here?” Arthur said by way of greeting. There was no point in delaying the inevitable.

Eames sighed. His hand was caressing gentle circles on Arthur’s back and his fingers seemed to linger, as if reluctant to move away from Arthur’s skin.

“The real question is,” Eames said. “Why did I leave?”

“I already know that answer,” Arthur said. His tone sounded far more strained than Arthur was comfortable with, but he met Eames’ eyes squarely. “I was there.” Even after you left, Arthur didn’t add.

Eames stared back at him, stubble on his face, bags under his eyes and a tension to his expression that didn’t bode well. He didn’t contradict him.

“Eames,” Arthur said, his voice firm, his heart breaking. “I don’t remember how we got here. Nothing I can recall could logically lead us here. We both know what that means.”

“That we do,” Eames said, not denying the accusation.

Arthur was surprised to note relief in his features, like he’d been afraid Arthur couldn’t tell the difference between reality and dream. More than that, like he hadn’t wanted Arthur to think this was real.

That thought hardened Arthur’s resolve, made him start to pull back. Eames’ hold just tightened around him and Arthur didn’t struggle. Not yet.

“Yes, this is a dream. The surroundings at least, not the way we woke in here, not this,” Eames said, closing another inch of space between them.

Arthur didn’t back away, but it wasn’t acceptance. Eames knew it from the way his expression broke open, sadness breaking his poker face.

“Arthur. We never- you can’t tell me we ever closed this door. You don’t even know what kept me away. You never asked-”

“It was implied, plainly enough,” Arthur interrupted him, voice cold. Just the thought of those strained months before they’d ended things was exhausting. “We’ve already had this fight, Eames. Rehashing it is not the reason we’re back in here. I’ll ask you again; what are we doing here?”

“Dreaming,” Eames said with a sigh, looking away. “What do you remember, exactly? From reality?”

Apprehension crawled up his spine at Eames’ evasiveness. Arthur sat up against the headboard, immediately missing the warmth. Eames let him do it, but he turned his head to study Arthur’s face, his posture, everything except his eyes, which he wouldn’t meet.

“A job,” Arthur said, trying to think back. It felt like trying to grasp smoke, images superimposing themselves, disorienting in a way Arthur hadn’t felt since before his days in dreamsharing. “Cobb called me. Said it was- it was something big. The payoff would be- well, with the lawyers and giving up Saito’s paycheck, it’d make sense he’d be back to work and I said that- I’d help with- with- something political, I think?”

Eames didn’t say anything, waiting for more. Arthur tried to read his expression, but there was nothing to be read, poker face perfectly in place.

Restless, Arthur stood, stumbling from the bed to look for his underwear. The morning air felt much warmer than Arthur remembered it when he let the sheets fall away from him.

Arthur turned his back on Eames and reached for a pair of discarded boxers laying half under the bed. They weren’t his and hung on the lines of his hips, but Arthur ignored the inconvenience and stood to look down on Eames’ sprawled form.

He tried to remember, moving to pace the room with his head in his hands, but there was something in his memories that was making his heart race and cold sweat break out on his face. A blank wall was hiding something important from him.

“Where was this job?” Eames asked, sitting up to watch him. Arthur felt trapped under his gaze, under the knowing tone of his voice.

Arthur loathed being the only one out of the loop.

“Why don’t you just tell me?” he bit out, stopping his pacing to face the bed. Eames didn’t look caught out, just shrugged his shoulders and stared back impassively, wary in a way that made Arthur afraid.

“This is important, Arthur,” Eames said, voice flat. “Try and recall. What happened after he called you?”

“You did,” Arthur remembered. He’d been sitting alone, nursing a scotch in New York when his phone had buzzed with Eames’ name on the display. “You called me.”

“To ask you for details, yes,” Eames said, looking expectant. “What then?”

“You were already in when you called me,” Arthur could remember being surprised. Eames and Cobb rarely spoke directly with each other if they could help it, only when Arthur wasn’t willing to play middleman. Eames had never liked Cobb, liked him even less after Mal’s death, and Cobb still saw Eames as a close competitor in too many ways to count.

“What was the job, Arthur?” Eames said, unrelenting. “Can you remember the details?”

He couldn’t. Arthur recalled something about a contract with a large corporation, but he couldn’t remember the name of their employer or what Cobb had been after, not even where the job was supposed to be. Frustrated, Arthur turned away to sit on the recliner, further away from Eames, who couldn’t seem to stop staring at him too closely for comfort.

“Barcelona?” He hazarded a guess, but that wasn’t right. Nettle had been the mark for that one, simple in and out extraction. Strange that he would remember that job over all the others.

“Nicosia,” Eames shook his head. “French transnational was looking for a team.”

“Oil,” Arthur said, maps and numbers springing to mind. There’d been competing proposals to gain access to off-shore oil reserves in Cyprus. They’d been called in on the eve of a millionaire agreement with the government, giant corporations looking for a way in around the political pressure.

“We had to infiltrate the negotiating table- they wanted inception performed like a magic trick.” Arthur remembered, dread filling him. The memory of how close they came to failure the last time they’d tried it was still fresh.

“And you said it would be insane, but that Cobb wasn’t backing down again,” Eames confirmed, his jaw tense. “That he needed it, despite how the last job went, despite how he almost killed us all.”

Arthur didn’t answer, mind spinning. His chest ached as he pondered the possibilities that tied those foggy memories to where he now stood. Had they taken the job and failed this time? Was that why it was so hard to remember anything? Had Arthur lost his mind like Mal, going too deep until she became unrecognizable?

“We took the job,” Eames continued, his voice becoming gentler. “It was dangerous, it was insane, but we took it. Inception wasn’t the problem this time, Arthur, do you remember that much?”

He didn’t. The more he tried to remember what had happened after accepting that job, the murkier the memories got until it was impossible to grasp more details. There was something buried there that a part of Arthur didn’t want to remember and all the worst-case scenarios started piling up at the front of Arthur’s mind.

“Why are we here, Eames?” he asked blankly, looking around what had once been their bedroom. As he watched, details were being filled in a slow-motion recollection, his mind filling in the blanks. The book on the bedside table, the smudges on the windows gradually solidified to make the place seem more and more real.

Eames didn’t answer him immediately, standing from the bed to move closer, unconcerned by his lack of clothing. Naked, he knelt by Arthur’s feet and sought his eyes, looking sad and tired. Arthur let Eames grab his hand in a too-tight grip, but interrupted him before he could speak.

“Did I fall into Limbo?” he asked softly, feeling numb. It couldn’t be that. But what could be worse than that? “Why haven’t you woken me up?”

“If that were the case, then I would have,” Eames promised, but instead of reassuring him the words made Arthur’s instincts go haywire. He didn’t want to hear what Eames had to say. He didn’t want to know what could be worse than Limbo, what could have gone so wrong, but at the same time-

Yes, at the same time, he already knew.

“Stop it,” Arthur said and stood to move away from Eames. He looked aimlessly around the room, searching without really being aware of it for his missing gun. If this was his dream, and it certainly seemed to be, then it’d be here. It had to be.

He found it half-hidden under the clothing on the floor, still in its holster. He picked it up to check its magazine before clicking off the safety, readying a shot. He tried not to notice how his hands were shaking. His chest hurt like someone was sitting on him.

Eames didn’t make a move to stop him, didn’t even look surprised when Arthur pointed the gun at him. Kneeling on the floor, he stared at Arthur over the sights of the gun and waited, impassive.

“Why did you bring me here, Eames?” Arthur asked. His voice shook but Arthur refused to be ashamed.

“It was Interpol,” Eames said, explaining nothing. “They caught our trail in Cyprus when we were still in the prep stages. You saw their raid coming, of course, but by then they had a team on stand-by and moved in on us before we could disappear.”

“Interpol would just aim to arrest us, they have us on so many charges-” Arthur began but Eames was already shaking his head, mouth pressed into a pale line.

“We fought back,” Eames said. He sounded choked. “They started firing when we ran, took the dead or alive cliché a bit too seriously. We took a few men down and they did us the same favor.”

“Eames,” Arthur breathed, wanting to close his eyes but unwilling to break their stare. “I can’t remember any of this.”

“Darling, you wouldn’t,” Eames confirmed sadly, finally standing back up. Arthur didn’t raise the Glock to follow his movements, could barely raise his head the more he tied together the loose ends. “This is on me. I hooked us up to the PASIV, brought us under as deep as I dared. It was the only way I could think of to give us some time-”

“No,” Arthur cut him off, but Eames didn’t seem surprised by the non-sequitur judging by the pain in his expression when he nodded.

“Arthur,” Eames said, too-soft. Arthur lowered his weapon by degrees, his heart pounding. “They got you. Grazed your head, but the damage to your torso was the worst-”

The feeling of wrongness inside Arthur crystallized into a dull ache of pain around his ribs and a distant awareness of danger he could almost remember. Arthur looked blindly at his hands for a moment, then mechanically secured the gun and put it back into its holster, setting it gently down on the dresser. He didn’t look at Eames, didn’t bother saying anything else.

Without a word he turned around and walked out of the room, wandering through the hallways and rooms of a place in Prague that no longer existed outside of memory.

Dispassionately, he took in the pictures, the carpet beneath his feet, the view from the windows. He recognized the stains on the wooden floor from when he spilled the remains of a glass of wine two years ago, the crooked tilt of the bookshelves by the couch that Eames had set up while drunk on cheap bourbon.

The comfortable, lived-in feeling of the place wasn’t enough to drive away the cold feeling in his bones. The steps through it felt unreal, a motion-picture come to life; that was all this place was.

Eames was already hurrying after him by the time he was standing in front of the large balcony windows, staring out into nothing.

Outside, Prague looked all wrong. Crooked streets stretched out in angles that went nowhere, a patchwork of cities from Arthur’s memories spreading outward as he watched, creating itself from a foggy void.

“Arthur,” Eames whispered, hands landing tentatively on Arthur’s shoulders. Arthur didn’t turn to face him.

With Eames watching, the city outside took a brighter gleam, looking alive despite the lack of visible inhabitants. The Vltava River, which in real life they hadn't had a view of, stretched out before their eyes with unrealistic emerald waters flowing serenely.

Arthur remembered the beautiful, unrealistic constructions of Eames’ dreams from when they’d first shared dreams together. Back then, Eames had shown him the world in their downtime, recklessly using millions of dollars worth of military technology to keep Arthur sane. Those fanciful dreams had been his refuge when trapped reenacting torture and death at every turn, warfare being the only scenario he’d been allowed to experience until Eames came along.

Seeing it now, the blend of Arthur’s realism and Eames’ fascination with the impossible, felt oddly comforting.

“So what is this then?” Arthur asked into the heavy silence that had set between them. He had to squeeze the words out, trying to ignore how quiet they came out. “I’m dying and you felt responsible? This some sort of penance so I can go in peace?”

“Don’t say that,” Eames said, hands tightening their hold on Arthur. Their familiar shape moved down his body until Eames was hugging him from behind, holding on too tight.

“You didn’t have to do this,” Arthur insisted to their reflection on the glass. “We said our goodbyes to this part of our lives a long time ago. If this is for my benefit, then-”

“It’s for my fucking benefit,” Eames cut him off, sounding wrecked. He buried his face in Arthur’s neck and Arthur let him do it. He didn’t want to lean into the touch, to need it as he did, but he closed his eyes where Eames couldn’t see him and breathed him in.

“This is just me trying to keep you.” Eames said, secret-soft into Arthur’s ear. “It’s me trying to show you how sorry I am, Arthur. You deserve so much better but it’s all I could give you.”

Arthur’s breath almost hitched when he felt those lips kiss the side of his throat, then move slowly up his neck in a quick path that drew an involuntary shiver. The next kiss was laid far too lightly by the side of his lips.

When Arthur finally moved, it was to turn just enough to meet those eyes, violently quashing the hope that wanted to rise up in his chest.

This was wrong, Arthur reminded himself, his instincts screaming.

Eames looked even worse than Arthur felt, masks tossed aside to let a tidal wave of regret and grief and fear take over his features and twisting them into something almost unrecognizable.

Arthur felt his own face crumble, but he didn’t dare to look away. He opened his mouth to say something but Eames was already talking over him.

“No, let me say this. I’m sorry, Arthur. I thought- we were supposed to have more time.” Eames’ voice sounded like a plea. Arthur had to close his eyes against it. “It was a fight. It was a stupid fight where we said awful things to each other and we would have been able to get over it if I’d just stayed like you asked me to-”

“Shut up,” Arthur breathed, stepping back from Eames’ hold just to get some distance, just to try to think.

“Just shut up,” Arthur repeated, not looking at Eames. “You didn’t want to stay, that’s fine. You didn’t have to. We just didn’t work out, it happens like-”

“I love you,” Eames said, still standing by the window.

Arthur stopped in his tracks at the words, staring down at his feet. He knew he was shaking visibly, but he couldn’t stop it, so he just stood there and tried to will his body to regain some measure of control, his fingernails digging grooves into the naked skin of his arms.

“I love you so bloody much, Arthur, I’d give anything for a chance to make you believe it,” Eames continued hoarsely, breaking Arthur’s heart with every word.

This, this was the conversation they’d never had. After Eames walked away and didn’t come back, even through all the jobs they’d worked together after, they’d never hashed out the whys, letting what they’d had die out, unseen. All the grief of what could-have-been was too much. Arthur didn’t need it now, couldn’t bear it now.

“You had a chance,” Arthur said, grateful that his voice came out even. “You had many chances and so did I. We didn’t take them.” He paused, trying to breathe around the lump in his throat. “It’s obviously too late now.”

“If I could fix this-” Eames started but Arthur cut him off with a gesture, not looking at him.

“No,” Arthur cut in, too-soft. Clearing his throat didn’t help. “I don’t want your excuses or your pity to feel any better about dying.”

“Arthur, would you bloody listen-” Eames snapped, moving to stand closer but Arthur avoided him and walked blindly to the bedroom, wishing he wasn’t standing here in ill-fitting underwear and nothing else. He felt naked, struggling to ignore the edge of grief in Eames’ words, the same despair Arthur was trying to choke back.

It was a battle just to breathe, but he managed, blinking back the tears that wanted to cloud his vision.

“No, Arthur, wait-” Eames was saying but Arthur shut the door in his face and locked it. He knew it wouldn’t hold against Eames for long.

Locating his clothes was a welcome distraction, something to focus on as he shrugged into dress pants and a wrinkled white shirt he didn’t bother buttoning or tucking in. The gun that he fit into his waistband was an afterthought.

He stumbled into the first pair of shoes he found, hearing the lock clicking as Eames eased the lock open, then the bang of the door slamming open from Eames’ shove.

“- not what this is!” Eames was saying, a jumble of indistinct words Arthur barely heard. He stood his ground when Eames rushed to stand in front of him, looking stonily back at him.

Eames’ chest was heaving, like he’d run a mile instead of just down the hallway and his eyes looked wild. Arthur didn’t feel any better, but he struggled to hide it as Eames reached out to grasp at his face with shaking fingertips.

“Arthur, listen to me. This isn’t some grand guilty gesture or some twisted last rite,” Eames said desperately, making Arthur’s breath hitch in a way he hoped Eames didn’t catch.

But he obviously did, judging by the way he stepped closer. His expression kept flickering, hungry and grieving all at once, like looking away from Arthur’s face hurt him, like looking at him was somehow worse.

“Arthur, this isn’t for your benefit,” Eames whispered, confession-soft. “It just might be the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. But it’s- we both needed a chance. I know I have no right to ask this of you-”

“No. You don’t,” Arthur cut him off, numb fists reaching out to push Eames away from him, punching his solar plexus to make him back off.

He dodged Eames’ instinctive attempt to stop him. Then he rushed forward to push with all his weight, one of his feet moving to trip Eames into the wall at his back. He hit it too hard, as Arthur had intended, his breath leaving him in a rush that gave Arthur the advantage.

Arthur’s forearm came up to lie against Eames’ throat with just enough pressure to still him. His lips twitched in an attempt to smile, but they twisted into what felt more like a sneer.

“You don’t have a right,” Arthur said, old hurt giving his words strength, “to ask me to stay here and listen to you apologize. We broke up over a year ago, Eames. I just found out I’m dying and I think I deserve a minute to digest that without making it about you.”

Eames didn’t seem to have anything to say to that. He let Arthur back away from him without breaking his gaze. Arthur stared him down, trying to be angry, but mostly he felt tired and scared and the temptation to reach out and hold on to Eames was too strong.

He needed to get out.

“Arthur,” Eames said when Arthur turned his back, walking hurriedly away, toward the front door that seemed farther away than it should be. “Arthur, I just couldn’t let you die believing I don’t love you. That’s all this is. I’m sorry-”

“Stop apologizing!” Arthur snapped, voice ragged, finally reaching the door. “It’s too late for that to change anything.”

In the wake of Eames’ silence, Arthur stumbled out of the apartment almost at a run, his laces still untied, his mind whirling. When he hit the street, he chose a direction blindly and started moving. Eames wasn’t chasing him but Arthur hurried through the ghost city regardless, barely paying attention to where he was going.

“I’m dying,” Arthur told himself, trying to sound out the words as if that would make them sound more logical. It didn’t help. His voice echoed ahead of him through the cobbled streets, the city spreading out farther and farther the more he walked.

Knowing that his life was ending felt surreal. The awareness choked him, like the world was closing in.

Arthur walked away from the shadow of buildings, heading for the bridges over the river, then changed his mind and turned back. He circled blocks at random until suddenly, Wenceslas Square showed up before him down turns that wouldn’t have found it in real life.

The peaceful sway of trees by the water were an incongruous contrast to how Arthur felt and he wasn’t surprised to see plants wilt into nothing as he stared, a restless fury in his chest that had nowhere to go.

Arthur was dying.

If he tried, he could almost remember a too sharp pain in his chest overpowering him and the slow suffocation of blood in his lungs. The origin of the memory was a tangle of past jobs and familiar faces, but the whys felt like a distant concern.

What did it matter, how it was happening? He was going to die, probably in minutes, hours at most. A death sentence hung over his head, impossible to fight. If it’d been any less certain, they wouldn’t be here. Eames could be one selfish bastard, but he wouldn’t have done this over nothing. That he was even daring to try and say goodbye this way, say it at all-

Arthur stopped walking, taking slow breaths with his eyes closed.

Arthur would die at 29, his life a collection of stops and starts into paths he’d mostly stumbled onto. He’d finished school to please his mother, joined the military to seek a purpose, abandoned it to keep his sanity, followed Cobb and Mal out of ambition and restlessness, but Arthur had rarely chosen something purely for himself.

Eames had always been the exception. Eames, unlike almost everything else, had always been his alone. Handsome, brilliant Eames with his stubborn interest and his endless secrets, using his easy charm and smarmy humor to hide a too-sharp mind and a romantic heart. He could break Arthur apart with a look, dig into his mind with a touch and he’d always been a perfect counterbalance to Arthur’s affected apathy and pathological need to prove himself.

But now Arthur was losing him, losing everything. The idea of a future suddenly wasn’t there anymore, either with Eames or without him, and Arthur felt stupid and childish, mourning the plans he hadn’t made as if that would have made him deserving of the time, the life he wouldn’t get to have.

Eames had brought him back here, to the place where they’d lived together for years, to tell him what? That he hadn’t meant to leave like he had, without an explanation? To say that Arthur hadn’t been in the wrong to want more, that they could have had it?

How did that help them now?

Arthur blinked slowly back into himself, exhaustion pulling at his body. His head hurt.

He found himself sitting on a creaky wooden bench in front of Tyn Church, feet throbbing from walking aimlessly. It felt like hours later, like days had passed, but the sun was still shining impossibly bright over his head.

Arthur was still dying. This was still a dream.

These were fabricated seconds slipping away from him, minutes he wouldn’t have in real life, time Eames had bought for him for a reason Arthur couldn’t grasp.

That was the one answer he could at least try to obtain, before his time was up.

 

 

 

The apartment was silent when Arthur finally managed to walk back inside the open doorway.

Night should have fallen outside but it never had, and the light made Eames’ figure on the couch perfectly visible.

Eames was sitting deathly still, staring at him. He had his head in his hands, his hair a disheveled mess and the room smelled of the cigarettes he pretended to have quit. He was dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt, the latter too small for his frame.

Eames’s eyes were as red as Arthur’s felt; his posture was slumped against the cushions and his face was sheet-white. He looked beautiful, like everything Arthur wanted to spend his life with and so miserable that Arthur longed to crawl onto the couch with him and kiss the lines on his face until they softened into something sweeter.

Arthur remained standing by the door, just watching. The moment stretched on.

Arthur knew, of course he did, that Eames had wanted to follow him into the city after their fight and that he’d stopped himself to give Arthur space to think. He also knew Eames had checked out of masochistic habit if Arthur had taken his Glock. The fact that he had, this time, wouldn’t have been a comfort but a threat to these last stolen moments they had together.

The silence dragged on, oppressive. Eames didn’t move and neither did Arthur, waiting for the other to resume their earlier argument.

“It’s been a year,” Arthur finally managed, biting back the ‘and three months’ he wanted to add. The accusation was the most inevitable, bitter over how pointless it was to grieve over lost time when the clock had run out of seconds.

“I didn’t want to break up,” Eames admitted after a pause. “It’s not an excuse. It was thick of me, Arthur, but I just wanted to be able to say we’d never truly ended it.”

His voice was raw, stripped of all pretence. It sounded more sincere than Eames ever let himself be. Arthur couldn’t face it, not now, so he walked inside and began to pace, breathing carefully in and out. He had to dodge broken glass from a vase Eames had apparently shattered at some point.

“Arthur, I knew I’d mucked it up,” Eames continued softly. “We both had. Fighting over everything and nothing, pushing and hurting each other until it got easier to stay away. Call it a truce. You knew where I was the entire time, just like I knew everything about every single job you took with Cobb.”

“What does that change?” Arthur asked brusquely, cutting Eames off. “It ended. True, we were both still hung up on it, but it’s not easy to gloss over four years of our lives, Eames. The fact we both still cared doesn’t mean it wasn’t over.”

There’d been no question. When Arthur had finally seen Eames again, he’d been a different person, colder, more closed off than he’d ever been with Arthur. How else had Arthur been supposed to take it? He’d seen rejection and resentment in Eames’ face, so he’d stayed as far away as their limited field allowed them to be.

“You asked me to come back,” Eames said. Arthur didn’t look at him at all when he did, studying his hands instead.

It was something Arthur didn’t want to admit to, because he had and Eames hadn’t come. That absence had broken the last thread between them; up until that point, waiting on a train station in Germany, Arthur had wanted to believe that even after everything, Eames would come back if Arthur asked.

But he hadn’t. Arthur had waited there for hours and Eames never showed up.

“I wanted to,” Eames kept talking, pleading, “so badly that it terrified me. I hated how much I wanted to undo what I'd done. And I barely understood what I wanted from you, then. It felt like I'd just make it worse.”

“We could have tried again. Started over,” Arthur said, voice thick. Eames shook his head.

“Do what again? We never stopped being together,” Eames murmured, but it sounded like a question.

“We stopped,” Arthur answered tiredly, running restless fingers through his hair and looking away from Eames’ pained look. “We stopped talking to each other, seeing each other -”

 _We stopped building a life together,_ was all Arthur planned to say.

Instead, he heard the words tumbling out of his mouth as if someone else was saying them, truth ripped out of him by the too real possibility he wouldn’t get the chance to ever say any of it at all.

“Suddenly, I couldn’t call you when I was exhausted just to talk about nothing. You didn’t send me pictures of yourself or texts at inappropriate times or those poetry books in every language just so I could figure them out.”

Arthur paused in his pacing by the tiny window in the hallway, facing empty streets instead of whatever look was on Eames’ face right then.

“We didn’t have a place together or travel thousands of miles just to burn dinner in a misguided attempt at romancing each other before we fell into bed for three days.”

Arthur still had fond memories of the time they’d managed to break the headboard of their hotel room in Greece.

“We couldn’t touch anymore or even talk without fighting. I couldn’t watch you fall asleep or listen to you shout at your stupid English football teams or have you drag me to those pretentious art shows you swore I’d love but that we’d both end up ditching for a walk around whatever city we were in-”

Arthur sounded bewildered to his own ears, lost, and it was such a stupid list of things, but it was all he’d thought about, for an entire year and three months, for the entire walk back to the apartment. How much he’d missed those things and everything in between.

When he felt Eames’ arms slide around him, he selfishly let himself need them, leaning back against that warmth like it was his to take.

In another life, he would have shrugged off the hold again. He would have fought it off and shouted biting accusations into Eames’ face, would have made more wounds before he even let himself acknowledge that Eames was trying to fix any of it.

In the past, they’d had the time, the freedom to feel anger, to hurt each other and hate each other in turns.

Now, if Arthur walked away again, if he hurt Eames, if he hurt them both like that again-

Now, it could be the very last thing they’d ever have of each other.

He felt the wetness on Eames’ face when his cheek met Arthur’s, but knowing he’d made Eames cry was just another ache piling up against the knot in his heart, barely felt.

These were their permanent goodbyes and the black wound inside Arthur wouldn’t ever get to stop bleeding out.

“In my entire life,” Eames said, his voice a painfully tight whisper warming Arthur’s ear. “I couldn’t have imagined being as in love with anyone as I am with you. From the minute I saw you, Arthur. You are the absolute best thing that could have ever happened to me. And I’d give anything to fix how much I hurt you.”

“You said I wasn’t enough,” Arthur couldn’t help saying, choking on the words. He closed his eyes when he felt Eames’ breath hitch, felt his arm tighten around him until the hold almost hurt.

“No, no, I didn’t,” Eames said, sounding pleading. “Not you, darling. Never you, you are so much better than I could have hoped for.”

“That’s not true,” Arthur breathed, sniffling back more threatening tears.

It wasn’t. Arthur had been selfish and immature, too proud to give in during most of their arguments, too closed-off to look for the right words to convey his feelings, too scared to apologize when he should have.

Eames ignored him, caught in what he’d wanted to say for however long it had been.

“Our life wasn’t enough,” Eames explained, making a brief flash of hurt steal Arthur’s breath. “Our life wasn’t enough in that I couldn’t spend every moment of it with you. We were always putting other things first, pulled half-way across the world like we expected to find the other waiting whenever we were done. It chafed, Arthur, how I was always too far away to help you when you wanted me there, how you were always out of reach when I needed you.”

“I tried- ,” Arthur started to defend himself, but Eames was already talking over him.

“Both of us, Arthur, we did that,” Eames said, voice firm. “We kept our distance, made a game of chasing each other because it was easier than being together. Then Mal died and it got even harder to not be afraid of this, of us, of how deep it went.”

“But you said-” Arthur said, because he remembered every word vividly. Every accusation, most of them true, had dug holes into what Arthur had thought was too solid to just fall apart as it had.

Eames turned him around in his arms, not letting him move away before he leaned forward and stole the words straight from Arthur’s lips.

Eames’ lips tasted like salt, but the inside of his mouth was warm and sweet. Arthur leaned into it like he was starving, desperately parting his lips to let Eames’ tongue in, feeling like they were trying to claw their way into each other, burrow somewhere where they couldn’t be apart.

“I lied,” Eames said, against his lips. “To you, to myself. I tried to make myself believe you couldn’t love me as much as I wanted, but you did. I know you did-”

“I do,” Arthur interrupted him, helpless not to admit it, masochistically studying how the words seeming to break Eames in two, tasting that pain on his lips, feeling it in his own chest.

“I do too,” Eames finally breathed when they broke for air, grasping Arthur’s cheeks to tilt his face up and imprint that truth with his eyes. “I loved you when I left and when I was gone and every second since I first saw you, you hear that?” 

“Wasn’t enough,” Arthur said, too sad to feel anger, but Eames shook his head almost violently, drew him into a crushing embrace as if he wanted to stop whatever Arthur was going to throw back in his face with his closeness. It almost worked. “I asked you to stay. I asked you to come back.” 

“You did,” Eames said, sounding wrecked. “You did Arthur, you shouldn’t have had to. I wanted to come crawling back every time I saw you.” 

“Then why not?” Arthur shouted, pushing him back a step and immediately regretting it. His fingers tangled in Eames’ T-shirt to pull him close again but Eames had already moved in, both unable to step too far.

“The way you looked at me,” Eames said, whispered into Arthur’s ear, their bitterest secret. “Like I was everything and like I’d taken everything from you, all at once. I hurt you like no one else could have, Arthur, just by staying away. And when I finally saw you again, so properly composed and still somehow wanting me back, it was- it was- I looked at you, darling, looked at you and thought ‘I could break him into pieces and he’d let me do it’. And it terrified me, that I’d let you do the same.”

Arthur didn’t say anything, closing his eyes against the rage he wanted to feel, the grief that swamped him. So stupid. They were both so incredibly stupid and now-

“That’s love,” Eames continued, his hands running down Arthur’s tense back, around his hips, fingers frantic. “That power to crush the one you wouldn't want to hurt. It’s too strong. It terrified me. You make me- I’m someone else around you. I didn’t recognize that man, the one that needs you like this, the one that wants to give you everything, the one that couldn't bear to be away from you. And you needed me to be him.”

 _I just needed you_ , Arthur didn’t say, regret clogging his throat. This moment, this fight that was too desperate to be a fight, this reconciliation in the nick of a time they no longer had-

“That’s love,” Arthur echoed quietly, feeling hollowed out.

Any self-righteous anger Arthur wanted to feel seemed smothered out, impossible to grasp. It was his turn, he knew, to break Eames apart even though he didn’t want to do it. He was going to die and leave Eames behind for good. And Arthur couldn’t fix it, couldn’t come back from it no matter what he did.

His fingers were tangled in Eames’ hair, and he felt Eames’ hands digging bruises into his naked skin. Pressed together from head to toe, they still weren’t close enough.

“I’m so sorry, Arthur,” Eames repeated, but Arthur wasn’t listening anymore.

The next kiss was every bit as desperate, more so, somehow. Eames’ teeth bit into Arthur’s lips, his jaw, his neck, before his tongue came back to soothe the pains and delve between Arthur’s lips again, tasting every corner of his mouth.

Their hands roamed, hungry and clumsy with it, scratches and bruises on their path as they sought to gain purchase, get even closer.

When Arthur felt the wall at his back he leaned into the support, feeling Eames’ fingers divesting him of his shirt, his pants, his stolen boxers which fell into a heap at his feet. He did the same to Eames’ sweatpants and T-shirt, tugging desperately enough to tear the fabric at the collar of the latter before Eames helped him pull it over his head.

Then they were finally pressed skin against skin from feet to forehead, leaning together to breathe each other’s air, tasting the hushed words they whispered without even realizing as they stared at each other’s reddened eyes.

“You’re beautiful,” Eames was saying, one of his hands now tangled in Arthur’s hair, pushing it behind his ears so it wouldn’t obscure his eyes, before kissing him again, seemingly unable to stop. “You’re breathtaking, let me see you-”

“Perfect,” Arthur was breathing when Eames let him, hungrily taking in the inked skin he could draw from memory, the light hair against his chest, the heat of Eames’ groin pressed into Arthur’s thigh and making his breathing hitch as his fingers wandered over Eames’ ass. “It’s always- I missed this- I-”

“Mine,” Eames was saying, against Arthur, into him, his fingers suddenly grasping at Arthur’s thighs and heaving up, making Arthur yelp and scramble to find his balance by wrapping his legs around Eames’ hips, his arms around those broad shoulders, breathing out of whack and heart racing. “I’ve got you now, Arthur, let me-”

“Anything,” Arthur promised, wished it meant more than it could, now, in this moment, but it was no less true.

Eames groaned, a rough sound caught in the back of his throat. Then he was carrying Arthur like he weighed nothing and set him down on top of the dining room table with a reverence their urgency shouldn’t have allowed him.

Everything seemed to slow down then, with Arthur stretched out on the flat surface, looking up at Eames. He raised his head to meet Eames’ eyes, reveling in the flush on Eames’ face, the tension coiled in his muscles that spoke of his effort to hold back.

Arthur spread his legs, leaning back invitingly, but it was his eyes Eames couldn’t seem to look away from. Arthur didn’t know what secrets they were spilling, but if they looked anything likes Eames’ eyes, overwhelmingly intent, raw and alive and shining with love then Arthur could understand the fascination.

In real life, the table he lay on had been uneven and old, one leg shorter than the rest. It would have toppled them over in a second, interrupted everything, but in here it was sturdy and perfect, holding their weight as Eames crawled on top of him, eyes hungry and mouth already whispering endearments.

The heat of Eames’ body against his made Arthur whimper, his sense of urgency returning with the sensation. It’d been so long since he’d felt that weight on top of him or felt those muscles fit against his like puzzle pieces, clutching him close.

Eames’ touch was reverent as it ran down Arthur’s stomach, moving lower while tracing every inch of skin along the way, every imperfection. Arthur didn’t dare hurry him along, painfully aware of why Eames’ look was so intense, his hands so careful.

Painfully aware this could very well be the last time they had each other this way.

“Shh, pet,” Eames whispered into his neck, laying small kisses there, soothing the earlier bites. “Don’t think.”

“Don’t let me,” Arthur murmured, an easy enough answer, even though he meant something deeper with it than he was willing to admit. Don’t let go, he meant, an impossible request that he wouldn’t dare put on Eames’ shoulders.

The slow way Eames leaned into kissing him then, carefully tilting his head to find the perfect fit and nudging Arthur’s lips open, seemed to echo Arthur’s thoughts with its burning need to claim. It was a slow kiss, overwhelmingly intimate, their bodies realigning themselves like they’d never been apart.

Everything narrowed down to those lips on his, to the feeling of being devoured from the inside out like Eames was stealing the very breath from his lungs.

When those clever fingers found his erection Arthur arched into the touch. Relief made him moan into Eames’ mouth, then whimper when they gripped him firmly, warningly, controlling the curve of his body into Eames’.

Meaningless pleas slid past his lips, quickly hushed by biting kisses that made Arthur’s mouth sting. He gripped Eames’ hips, finding a curve of muscle that his fingertips hadn’t forgotten the shape of, which easily molded to his hold.

He pulled Eames in and brought their hips into contact, swallowing Eames’ hitched sounds and riding the movement, setting a rhythm to create friction between them.

Eames seemed to lose his grip on his own control with an almost audible snap.

He violently broke their kiss to trail bites down the line of Arthur’s neck, marking him with an edge of pain Arthur relished. Arthur moaned, arching into it, feeling Eames’ chin nudging his head to one side in order to expose him to the assault.

The thrust of Eames’ hips went frantic, his restraining grip on Arthur tightening until it was almost painful. His knees nudged Arthur’s thighs further apart, carelessly straining Arthur’s muscles to the point of burning.

One of his long-fingered hands moved down to finger around his entrance, unerringly tracing their way down Arthur’s body. Arthur tried to urge him on, but he didn’t need to. Before he knew it, the tip of Eames’ dry finger was breaching him, a slow, stinging penetration that made Arthur’s spine go rigid, torn between pain and relief at the sensation.

“Eames,” Arthur breathed, and the sound seemed to land Eames back into himself.

“I’ve got you,” Eames said, more a statement of wonder than a reassurance. Arthur opened eyes he hadn’t realized he’d closed to find Eames too close- not close enough- his skin starting to glisten with sweat.

Arthur didn’t say anything. He slid his hands down to grip Eames’ ass, kneading the flesh he found there just to see Eames shiver. Then one of his hands moved to trace the path to the back of Eames’ balls, gripping the heavy sack with gentle fingers. Eames’ eyes went liquid with heat.

“Let me,” Arthur breathed, feeling that dry finger still spreading him open and too aware of the heavy weight on top of him. “Eames, let me.”

The finger moved, carefully stretching the muscle with an edge of discomfort Arthur couldn’t quite hide. Eames kissed him to soothe it, gently nudging until he managed to nudge Arthur’s prostate with a twist of that digit that made Arthur see stars, breath catching in his throat.

“Just enough to get me here,” Eames said against his lips, eyes knowing. Arthur smiled shakily, acknowledging the reference to the times he’d turned the tables by sucking Eames off and derailing him.

“Promise,” Arthur said, earnest, cherished the fond look in Eames’ eyes as he studied Arthur’s face, drinking him in. The finger moved again, stimulating, giving both of them a taste of what was to come.

“Please,” Arthur pleaded at the feeling, eager for more, anything, everything of Eames’ he could get. “Eames, please get on with it.”

“Hush,” Eames breathed. The finger withdrew slowly, Eames beginning to pull away by inches that stole away the heat they’d built in the contact of their bodies. “Don’t move a muscle, darling. Let me see you right there, spread for me.”

Arthur shuddered but he didn’t move, letting Eames rearrange him. He watched hungrily as Eames moved forward on his knees, the table impossibly holding their weight as they twisted themselves into a new position. Soon, Eames’ thighs were straddling Arthur’s prone head on the table, his erection inches from his lips.

Arthur didn’t wait for permission, his head rising up to wrap his lips around the hot flesh, eyes unwillingly falling shut at the feel and taste that overwhelmed him. Eames’ cock breached his mouth, pushing forward in small bursts of Eames’ hips until it lay heavy against his tongue, his jaw spread wide.

“Oh Arthur,” Eames breathed, too soft, hands finding Arthur’s hair.

Arthur hummed in response, straining his neck to find the right angle. One of Eames’ hands found those muscles and supported them as he began to move his hips purposely forward, feeding more inches in. Arthur relaxed into the hold, welcoming, carefully breathing through his nose.

Above him, Eames was already babbling nonsense, a rush of endearments and pleas that made Arthur’s blood boil, made him doubly determined to make this as good as he was able. His hands gripped Eames’ hips, guided him forward until he was struggling not to choke, swallowing desperately until he could handle it, until the muscles in his throat relaxed and Eames could push in all the way inside.

“-beautiful,” Eames was saying, voice too thick. “Arthur, you’re- Arthur, -”

Arthur didn’t hurry his pace. He guided Eames back inch by inch, his tongue rubbing the underside as much as he could manage, friction wet and messy, desperate.

Then he leaned forward again, putting a strain on his jaw, trying to take it all back inside until his lips were against Eames’ groin, almost no air reaching his lungs. He carefully repeated the motion, sliding up and down, his cheeks hollowing out, forcing himself to swallow, lick, take it deeper on each turn, humming at odd intervals that made Eames jerk and close his eyes.

When he got a rhythm going, one of his hands moved to tease Eames’ balls, wanting to grin at the curses the move incited. Arthur massaged them gently, weighing them, increasing and decreasing the pressure in turns with Eames’ involuntary half-thrusts.

“Darling,” Eames was saying. Eames murmured things like perfect and please and that’s it, and fuck, Arthur just like that; words slid like honey from his lips, curses and prayers intermingling.

Arthur felt Eames’ fingers tighten in his hair, restricting his movements, starting to pull him off. The slurred sound of his name and the mangled endearments rose in pitch when Arthur licked around the head, teasing the slit until it was oversensitive.

“Stop,” Eames said, sounding ragged. Arthur did. He obediently let himself be pulled away from Eames’ heavy erection, but he couldn’t resist one last tiny kiss at the tip that earned him a sharp pull on his bangs.

Before he could react Eames was already moving back, almost tumbling them off the table as he struggled to rearrange them again in a hasty tangle of limbs. Arthur got an elbow in his ribs and a knee sliding perilously close to his privates, make him go eerily still, before Eames was satisfied, once again straddling Arthur’s prone form completely, his thighs over Arthur’s hipbones.

“You’re changing the physics,” Arthur remarked, an observation completely removed from his actual thought process, which slid along the lines of _please, now, fuck me, Eames now, please, now, hurry_.

Nonetheless, it was true. The table felt soft underneath him and larger than it should be, a bed in all but form. Arthur saw impossible angles stretching before his eyes to make their fumbling possible.

“Always over-thinking,” Eames muttered, then he was quiet, his fingers disappearing between his lips for long seconds that had Arthur staring, transfixed by the swollen mouth that wrapped around those digits.

“Eames,” Arthur mouthed, barely a sound escaping him, but Eames got it. He stopped wetting his fingers, had them quickly returning to Arthur’s entrance while Arthur tried in vain to spread his legs wider.

The return of that sensation, slow penetration made only slightly easier by the spit, made Arthur writhe. He moaned, unrestrained, his hands clenching around the corners of the table he could grasp with all his strength.

Eames didn’t tease. His fingers moved urgently, insistently, fingers scissoring and moving inside of Arthur, dilating the muscle while Arthur tried to gain enough focus to relax, let go into the touch. He barely touched Arthur’s prostrate, focusing only on getting him ready.

It seemed like hours before the fingers withdrew and Eames was positioning his hips as they both wanted them, sweat from the exertion of holding back sliding down Eames’ smooth, beautiful skin onto Arthur’s.

The slide in was painful. Still too tight, too tense from sheer anxiety and not enough lubrication. Arthur struggled not to wince, lest Eames would stop. It was inconceivable.

Everything narrowed down to the burning intrusion of too much and _not enough_ , Eames filling him completely, splitting him open in two, stealing Arthur’s senses, his self-possession.

“Arthur,” Eames was mumbling, broken open but Arthur couldn’t answer, his mouth busy gasping for breath, eyes sightlessly tracing Eames’ face.

Eames’ hips moved in slow bursts, careful not to hurt beyond the friction, but he never stopped moving in, forcing Arthur’s body to yield to his.

Inescapable, overwhelming, Eames was taking him and rendering him wordless, breathless, thoughtless, pure instinct driving him to move his hips forward, seeking that completion that held him on the edge of pain. Stars burst behind Arthur’s eyes when his movement met Eames’ thrust half-way, pulling Eames into him to the hilt.

“Oh Arthur,” Eames whispered into his lips, ragged syllables between the breath they shared, the heat of their intermingled bodies. “Perfect. You feel perfect.”

“Don’t stop,” Arthur whispered back, held still under Eames’ weight, held suspended with Eames inside him, perfectly still, filling every possible space until it was all Arthur could focus on. How to get more, get closer, somehow, meld them into one. “Eames, move.”

Eames did. With a heave that drew startled gasps out of both of them, he lifted his hips and started thrusting, movements slow, calculated, building up by degrees. Arthur wrapped his legs around Eames’ moving hips, thrusting back without rhythm, riding the movements mindlessly, body acclimating itself to Eames’.

Arthur almost shouted when Eames hit his prostate, thrusts moving to hone in onto that spot. Seeking friction on his neglected erection between their stomachs meant letting go of Eames’ skin and Arthur didn’t dare.

He rode the slide of his skin against Eames’ belly, feeling a slow build of pressure that steadied into a burn, almost secondary to the overload of sensation of having Eames again, so close, so his, everything he’d wanted to feel.

Arthur moaned Eames’ name, his real name, his last-name, a mangled assurance of who he was with, of how close they were. He clutched Eames’ shoulders with fingers gone numb, his back, nails digging into inked skin, seeking leverage and finding none, coordination shot.

When he couldn’t hold on anywhere, when he felt Eames’ lips kissing and murmuring impossible promises into his neck, his collarbone, Arthur half-sobbed for breath, biting down on Eames’ shoulder to muffle the pleas he wanted to make.

“I love you,” Arthur couldn’t stop himself from mumbling, didn’t want to. “Love you so fucking much, you don’t know-.”

“Love you,” Eames murmured back, into his skin, lips sliding, finding his ear and biting, then soothing the sting, his hips moving faster, more desperate, lingering over every thrust inside, joining them deeper, it seemed, every time. “I do know. Everything, Arthur, you’re everything, you hear me? That’s it. That’s it, love, let go.”

Arthur didn’t yet, couldn’t, but he did relax into Eames’ hold, to the way Eames’ hands moved behind him, lifted his hips to accommodate him, spread him impossibly further, bending his legs back.

The angle made it hard to find friction against his erection, but Arthur didn’t care, mind gone blank, feeling their closeness spread out into seconds, minutes, hours, it seemed, time stretching on itself to let them be together.

“Let go for me, luv,” Eames was saying, endlessly, repeating Arthur, Arthur, darling, like he couldn’t get over the sound of that name.

Arthur held his position with difficulty when one of Eames’ hands let go of his leg, but it was soon worth it when those too-hot fingers wrapped themselves around his hardness and pulled, jerking him off in uncoordinated, fast strokes that made Arthur arch up mindlessly.

The move impaled him deeper on Eames’ cock, straight into his prostate and set off a chain reaction that made him moan hoarsely, almost a scream.

Every muscle in him contracted, whiteness taking over his vision as he felt the pressure in his balls release, his orgasm taking over like a tidal wave. Arthur sobbed, felt Eames increase the pace of his fingers, his hips stumbling in their rhythm inside him as he came, wetness making Eames’ handjob smoother in those perfect seconds.

Arthur lost priceless seconds in that whiteout, and when he came back to himself his entire body seemed limp, bending to Eames’ will flawlessly. Eames was still thrusting, riding the involuntary twitch of Arthur’s inner muscles squeezing his cock.

“Eames,” Arthur breathed, a thank-you and a c’mon in that whisper and he watched in a daze, the desperate twist of Eames’ lips before a shaky smile took its place, a kiss taking him over, tongue moving past Arthur’s lax lips.

Arthur opened easily to it, let Eames take everything, cherishing the feeling of Eames inside him everywhere, one in every possible way.

“Right here,” Eames promised him, his thrusts growing more ragged. It ached a little, Arthur’s skin oversensitive everywhere, feeling raw, but Arthur just shakily hung onto Eames’ hips a little harder, fingers clumsily tracing their way up to wrap themselves in Eames’ hair.

When he came, Eames was beautiful. He groaned, too-loud, Arthur’s name half-mangled, his body stilling inside of Arthur to the very hilt. His hips twitched with the force of the shudders that overtook his frame and Arthur watched him, transfixed with the way Eames refused to close his eyes, drinking in Arthur’s face.

Arthur only distantly felt how Eames’ cock pulsed inside his exhausted inner-muscles, the slight wetness that eased the next few thrusts.

He was too busy drowning in those eyes, framing that stunning face between his shaky hands and feeling so grateful that he’d die having had this back, even for an instant.

The endearments that slipped past his lips then felt natural. He cherished the syllables sliding over his tongue, the way they softened Eames’ face into something that looked like love and pain and longing.

They kissed again then, Arthur thrusting up into Eames’ stilling hips, not wanting to move apart.

He saw the regret in Eames’ eyes start to come back as they slid away from another kiss, and another, a palpable tang as they breathed the same air.

Arthur kissed it away from his lips, from his eyes, closed his own and gave himself into the movements of their tongues, their lips. He cherished the feeling of moist heat and the familiar taste he loved, letting it be everything, letting it stand in place of inadequate words.

They didn’t say anything when they finally slid tentatively apart, eternities later. They stared at each other, mesmerized, then slowly untangled stiff limbs, winces and half-smiles exchanged as they did.

Arthur blinked as he became aware of the shift around them, the palpable softness of a mattress and sheets under his hands. He half sat up to stare, found himself lying on their bed in their bedroom instead of in the living room they’d started out in.

“How-” he started to ask, then shook his head, turning to Eames with a slight frown that felt odd in his face. “Eames. It’s dangerous.”

“It is,” Eames agreed, his arm already sliding around Arthur’s waist and pulling him close. His free hand pulled tangled blankets over their forms as they moved together, settling without an inch between them.

Arthur laid his head on Eames’ chest and didn’t say anything else, though he was still slightly tense under Eames’ soothing hands, listening for projections bursting into their bubble of peace.

Nothing was happening.

“There’s nobody outside,” Eames reminded him gently, like he didn’t want to say it at all. Arthur absorbed this and hesitantly nodded, knowing he’d wandered for hours through deserted streets.

Neither of them said anything else, even if their arms tightened around each other. They didn’t want to dwell on what the lack of projections meant. The word that came to mind was frightening and hard to grasp, a half-remembered dream away.

The silence stretched on. Arthur breathed. They didn’t sleep.

 

 

 

"You’re a disgrace to criminals everywhere,” Arthur told Eames seriously, glaring down at the cup in his hand.

Eames had finally slipped out of bed some hours later, bringing back a tray of something approaching breakfast. Outside, the sky hadn’t given way to night, but Arthur still felt rested from hours spent lying together, indulging in their closeness.

“You should appreciate the gesture,” Eames said, sitting down on the bed next to him with his own warm mug. Arthur made a face when he tried another sip of a cup of coffee, that while warm and smelled just right, didn’t taste like anything other than perfectly brewed tea.

“I’d appreciate some coffee,” Arthur muttered half-heartedly, scooting closer to Eames.

“I didn’t realize that mastering the taste of caffeine was an integral part of our profession, darling, my apologies,” Eames drawled, raising an eyebrow at him. Wearing sweatpants and nothing else, hickeys on his skin and stubble burn on his cheeks, he looked incredible. Arthur didn’t stop himself leaning in for a kiss from those swollen lips.

“I will never understand how you ever manage all night stake-outs without it,” Arthur continued, voice even despite his sudden breathlessness.

“The brilliance that is me, of course,” Eames told him, gently disengaging Arthur’s hands from around his cup of fake-coffee and setting it aside.

Arthur let himself be dragged even closer by the hands on his hips, his arms sliding effortlessly around Eames’ chest. The thin material of Arthur’s T-shirt didn’t hide the warmth of Eames’ skin and leaning in to breathe him in made Arthur’s dick give an interested twitch under the sheets.

“And I won’t ever understand why you never have a proper breakfast or wake up before noon without three cups of that foul brew,” Eames confided, leaning in to kiss the taste of tea from Arthur’s mouth. Arthur opened up to the assault, fingers digging into Eames’ neck. “Shouldn’t the army have made a morning person out of you?”

“Years of being regularly kicked out of bed at five AM to get screamed at somehow had the opposite result,” Arthur confessed, smiling impishly. In this moment, wrapped in their abating heat and the familiarity he’d so missed, he could almost let himself forget everything else.

Almost.

“I didn’t sleep in today though,” Arthur said, burying his face next to the hollow of Eames’ throat. “We didn’t sleep at all.”

“That should sound dirtier than it does,” Eames agreed, his hand moving to pet Arthur’s messy hair. “I don’t feel tired though, do you?”

“No,” Arthur sighed, vainly trying not to over-think the logistics. How long had they been here already?

“You’re handling this terribly well,” Eames murmured into his ear, his breath a warm touch on Arthur’s skin. Though the tone was careful, measured- and it was just like Eames to fish for information so directly- the words brought a flash of irritation Arthur couldn’t hold back in time.

“So are you, for that matter,” Arthur said, immediately regretting his harsh tone. He looked up, an apology on the tip of his tongue, but Eames was looking somewhere over Arthur’s head.

“Hardly handling anything,” was all Eames said. A muscle in his jaw twitched, one of his tells, and Arthur reached out hesitantly to touch it, his hand moving to rest gently on the back of his neck. Eames didn’t relax.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur breathed. He cursed that he couldn’t say it louder, those words he should be shouting from the rooftops before it was too late. “Eames-”

“Hiding is more like it,” Eames laughed, an ugly choked sound that made Arthur’s chest ache. He raised himself up to look at Eames in the face, frowning, but Eames just met his gaze calmly, drinking him in with an intensity that hadn’t faded. “I’m hiding you away in here, aren’t I? I’m hiding us both here, where I get to keep you for an indefinite forever and patch things up like it’s that easy to fix everything.”

“It’s not indefinite,” Arthur said. He hated that he had to be the one to say it out loud every time, but it was the truth and Arthur didn’t want Eames getting lost in any fantasy. It was too dangerous. “It’s a dream, Eames, it’s artificial.”

“Nothing about me wanting to be with you is _artificial_ ,” Eames bit out. His expression twisted into something furious, desperation peeking through the edges.

Arthur didn’t fight it when Eames pulled him closer or the hands that rose to frame his face and hold him still. Eames reacted like Arthur had been accusing him instead of stating simple fact, but Arthur got it. They were both on edge and they’d always been too good at trying to stir up fights instead of talking things out.

“Nothing about me choosing to stay is artificial,” Arthur admitted, raising his own hands to tangle in Eames’ hair and pull him down into another kiss. The haggard edge of Eames’ expression didn’t ease. Arthur had the feeling Eames wasn’t closing his eyes each time they kissed, like even that concession was too much.

“But that doesn’t mean we get to keep this fantasy,” Arthur said, voice too quiet.

“Can’t ever let yourself go, can you?” Eames said, aiming for a joke. It sounded more pained than amused, and Arthur’s return smile felt sadder than it should.

“Can’t let you forget it,” Arthur said. That was the point. “That would be stupid, Mr. Eames. I’m here on a schedule.”

“Whenever are you not?” Eames said, more genuine in his delivery this time. The next kiss was softer, fond, and Arthur leaned into the taste of it. Eames hands’ moved to hold his neck at a more comfortable angle, a familiar hold that made Arthur smile against Eames’ lips.

“When we were home,” Arthur answered, as if the question had been genuine. Eames pulled back a little to look at him, puzzled. Arthur smiled, his hands moving down to run down Eames sides, to the small of his back. “I wasn’t in a hurry to leave then. You couldn’t wake me up even waving coffee under my nose and we had to step out for brunch in the middle of the afternoon.”

“You always did enjoy leaving me to starve in your wake,” Eames agreed, like he hadn’t had hours to himself to do whatever he wanted.

“You could have eaten. Not my fault you forgot to buy groceries every time and we only kept stale cookies in the cupboard.” Arthur argued for the sake of it, enjoying the memory. “You could have gone out and bought something while I slept.”

“What, and miss the show?” Eames made an exaggerated face of dismay. Arthur rolled his eyes at him. “To see you lying there, all rumpled and barely covered by those ridiculously expensive sheets was worth a few hunger pains.”

“You just like morning sex,” Arthur teased, his smile unchecked. He pretended not to notice the way Eames stared at him, how his fingers gently touched one of his dimples as if committing it to memory.

“There is that,” Eames granted, too serious, then he smiled back. “If you could call the noon sex we had ‘morning’. Frankly, Arthur, it’s a wonder you can get any work done with those indulgent sleeping habits of yours.”

“It’s not always like that,” Arthur defended himself, meaning _it’s not like that without you._.

Truth was, Arthur had always been an insomniac, too prone to late nights and excessive amounts of coffee, so finding a place where he could sleep undisturbed was precious and rare. It’d been like that at home, Eames’ fingers in Arthur’s hair, his voice a teasing rumble as he tried to tempt him with caffeine to greet the morning light. Sometimes, it even worked.

“I know,” Eames told him, too-knowing eyes set on his. “It’s not any less adorable, though.”

“I take offence,” Arthur said, not at all seriously.

“Take whatever you want,” Eames said, too honest and almost under his breath. Arthur’s eyes widened, his heart giving a lurch in his chest, but Eames didn’t let him dwell on it for long. “You know this is everything, don’t you, Arthur? You do know it.”

“Everything we get?” Arthur asked, caught off guard. He knew that. He was the one constantly pushing Eames to remember that.

“Everything I want,” Eames answered, his arms closing like steel bands around Arthur’s waist. “I love you. We fucked it up once, but that doesn’t change anything. I want to be with you.”

“Eames,” Arthur said, feeling trapped. He backed off from the embrace, forcing himself to create space between their bodies and immediately wishing he didn’t have to. “Don’t. What do you want from me? How many goodbyes are we going to go over?”

“It’s no goodbye, love,” Eames said, touching his face gently. “It’s simple fact. Being here can’t be just a fantasy, Arthur. We can make it be more than that. This is real, it was _us_.”

“It was,” Arthur agreed. He saw the way Eames flinched at the past tense, but it was the truth. “Thank you for reminding me how good it was.” For doing this for me, Arthur meant.

Eames didn’t take it well.

“This isn’t a bloody highlight reel, Arthur,” he said, his temper on a hair-trigger. Arthur watched him stand up to pace in frustration and wished he could also get angry, fight back. But he was tired of fighting.

“I do get it, you know,” Arthur said, sitting up in bed and wishing this hurt less to say. He did get it. This healing was something they’d needed, the time they should have had in real life to fix things. From this point, Eames could move on.

But Eames didn’t seem to hear him, his eyes stormy and movements jerky as he gestured wildly.

“Why won’t you just believe me? I’m here because I want to be with you!” Eames accused him, right on target as usual.

Arthur wanted to believe it, of course. Their mutual sadness and desperation were real enough and there was nothing to doubt about the regret they shared. But to ask him to believe that Eames would want this out in the real world, if none of this had happened- that part was harder to swallow.

“I believe you,” Arthur said sadly, not looking at Eames as he came up with the words. Outside, the skies were a shocking dark grey, a contrast to their earlier brilliance. “The same way I’d believe a last confession on a deathbed, even if the deathbed is mine

“It’s not any less true,” Arthur continued when Eames didn’t interrupt him. “For all that it’s useless.”

“You get to hate me, you know,” Eames said, completely out of the blue. It made Arthur look up to meet his eyes, but he wished he hadn’t when he saw the wounds his words had left there. “For forcing us to be here, for bringing all of this up now when it’s- when we should have faced it before.”

“It’s not your fault we didn’t have more time. I always knew this job would kill me,” Arthur said, instead of answering the unspoken question. He felt exhausted, brittle under Eames’ gaze.

“You didn’t have to know you were dying,” Eames admitted, but Arthur just shook his head at him. “It’s the truth, Arthur. You were out of it, bleeding out too fast. You could have slipped away none the wiser.”

“Hardly my style, is it?” Arthur tried to joke, knew it’d fall flat.

“I’m making the last fucking minutes of your life about us,” Eames admitted, like Arthur didn’t know, like Arthur would have had it any other way. “You get to be angry if you like, tell me to sod off or just-.”

“Don’t tell me what I should be feeling. I have you back,” Arthur interrupted him, voice raw. He stood and chanced stepping closer, unsure of his welcome, but Eames met him half-way until they stood too close together, sharing breaths again. “Thank you for that. For you.”

“I screwed everything up,” Eames whispered against him, barely more than breath, but Arthur’s lips stole that from him, desperately swallowing that lie.

“We both did that,” Arthur gasped out when he had to pull away to breathe, head swimming. He felt Eames gently steady him and leaned back against the contact. “Don’t take all the credit, you dick. I was an asshole and a coward just as much as you were. I was too distant, too proud-”

“And I was too selfish. Still am. But you’re the love of my life,” Eames told him, with perfect sincerity.

Arthur almost laughed, hysterical. He wanted to roll his eyes, push it off. The fact of it was-

“You’re ridiculous,” Arthur said. He couldn’t keep himself from smiling and leaning into those lips. He tried not to taste the desperation in their next kiss, tried not to cling too tightly. “But you’re mine.”

They’d lost years. But they’d had this, all along, whatever their denials and flaws had been. Arthur knew better than to underestimate how deep this ran by now.

“I don’t know how we’re supposed to do this,” Arthur admitted after a moment, whispering the words against Eames’ neck and briefly tightening his arms. “We’ve always- we’ve had time, Eames. I can’t imagine just lying here waiting for the end.”

Eames sighed into Arthur’s hair, slowly moved back to meet his eyes. He looked tired and sad, something Arthur wished he could erase.

“The more we want it,” Eames said, voice low like sharing a secret, “The more real it will be.”

That was precisely what scared Arthur the most. How much he wanted this, how much Eames seemed to want the same, when it was all a dream. Arthur might not be risking anything that he wasn’t already losing, but Eames-

“How deep under are we?” Arthur asked softly, a question he hadn’t wanted the answer to before.

“At least three levels,” Eames said, not holding back. The words hit Arthur like a punch, making him aware of the danger; he’d have to give up all of this, fast, for Eames’ sake. But Eames wasn’t done.

“We might have fallen deeper, Arthur, I don’t know,” he said, reading Arthur’s fear on his face. “This was just a dive down with barely any time to figure out what to do. Hurt as you were, your subconscious might have collapsed a whole level from the start or my need for more time could have pushed us deeper. It’s possible.”

“You mean we don’t know how long we have,” Arthur translated, mind whirling. “It could be days or months or years. We don’t know where we are.”

“Nobody’s sure how Limbo works,” Eames confirmed. He looked too calm, too composed, but then again he’d known the risks from the start.

Both of them had only sketchy ideas of what an endless space of raw subconscious was supposed to be. Cobb and Mal were the only ones they knew to have come back from Limbo somewhat whole and they’d never quite explained what they’d gone through. Simultaneous creation and perception, a loss of awareness, a loss of reality maybe, but they didn’t know if it had to be a conscious choice to let go or if it pulled you under unsuspecting.

“Why can’t I remember?” Arthur asked. “I just have these- flashes, but I can’t remember getting shot or the levels before this one. I’ve never had that happen.”

“Head shot,” Eames said bluntly, making Arthur smile with little humor.

“Not a very good one, it seems,” he couldn’t help saying, even knowing Eames would fail to see any humor in it. Eames buried his face in Arthur’s neck and Arthur pulled him closer, buried his face in Eames’ hair like they could hide from how wrong things were.

“It grazed you,” Eames recalled, voice going distant. “You’d already taken a shot but were holding your own. That bastard was aiming for the kill. So I tackled you, but it wasn’t fast enough.”

“That’s not your fault,” Arthur said, but Eames wasn’t listening to him.

“It might have fractured your skull, maybe just a concussion, I don’t know. You were bleeding everywhere,” Eames said, running a hand down Arthur’s body like he could still see the blood on his skin. “You stayed conscious for a bit, but you weren’t aware. By the time we’d gotten you in the van, you were completely out. Cobb and I hadn’t even noticed you’d been shot twice in the torso until you- your breathing-”

“Collapsed lung,” Arthur murmured, detached from the images Eames was painting. He could almost remember the ambush, the abandoned building they’d been working in crawling with people, the echoes of gunfire. He had no way of knowing if the memories were real. “You got us out of there.”

“We gunned it for the safehouse we’d prepared,” Eames said, moving to sit on the bed and pulling Arthur to his side. “Cobb and I did nothing but scream at each other the whole way there.”

“Nothing new there,” Arthur tried to smile, but his mouth didn’t cooperate. He felt a little numb as he scooted over to sit against the headboard. “Were you two injured? How bad was it?”

“A few broken ribs, some dislocations, some non-fatal bullet holes,” Eames answered vaguely, sounding completely unconcerned with that information. Arthur couldn’t spot a lie in his expression and hoped he was reading him right. “You got the brunt of it, first line of fire as usual.”

“Point man,” Arthur pointed out reasonably, looking away from the accusations Eames was obviously biting back. Arthur didn’t remember enough of the shootout to know what he’d done to get hurt, but it was his job to cover the others and he wouldn’t apologize for having gotten it right.

“It took us too long to get there,” Eames continued after a minute, staring at the ceiling. Arthur wished he couldn’t hear the guilt in his voice. “We had to shoot our way out and drive around to lose their tail. Arthur, we- we were going to turn ourselves in, when we saw how bad it was, I swear. I told Cobb to drop us off. I’d let them catch up, but it- it was obvious by that point-”

“Eames,” Arthur interrupted him, leaning in to kiss him and look him directly in the eye. “I don’t doubt for a second you would have let yourself get caught if it would have made a difference.”

“We could have tried!” And it was obvious from the vehemence that he’d had this fight with Cobb. “It was still possible that in a hospital-”

“Maybe if they’d cared whether or not they caught us alive,” Arthur said confidently, because he could imagine the circumstances. “We’re a security breach for them, Eames. Our governments want control of the technology back. It’s not about us.”

“We could have risked it,” Eames insisted stubbornly, looking over to the side. Arthur just smiled sadly.

Fact was, they could have just as easily been executed instead of arrested at that point. Cobb had just gotten his children back. Eames was wanted in England for treason. They’d be risking everything for the extremely unlikely chance Arthur could have lived through three gunshot wounds or that anyone else would care to make sure that he did.

“You did the right thing,” Arthur said, certain. They would have done everything possible and Arthur couldn’t ask them for more. “In getting away, that is.”

“I can hear a ‘but’ coming,” Eames tried to sound unconcerned, but mostly failed. Arthur ran a hand over his hair in frustration, crossing his arms over his chest to fortify himself.

“Going down into a dream with someone so badly wounded, let alone three levels down, was just plain stupid, Eames,” Arthur said, disbelieving that Cobb or Eames could have risked it. “A head wound! You didn’t know if there’d been brain damage or what it’d be like down here.”

“You sound like Cobb,” Eames sighed, burying his face in his hands. Arthur watched him in disbelief. “We fought like rabid dogs about it, Arthur. I threatened him, his children- I’m not proud of it!” he defended when he saw the look Arthur was undoubtedly giving him. “I needed more time with you.”

“How did you get Cobb to agree?” Arthur asked, morbidly curious despite himself.

“He was covered in your blood by the time we got inside the safehouse,” Eames told him hollowly, gaze going distant again. “Whatever I think of the man, he does care about you, Arthur. He agreed to help me build a stable first level and convince you to go one further so we could have a whole day together and I could tell you everything.”

“He didn’t know you wanted more than that,” Arthur realized, reading Eames’ face. Eames just nodded, unrepentant. His hand had found Arthur’s, their fingers tangling together. “Is he awake now?”

“He’d wake up first, monitor your vitals,” Eames said, shrugging. “He wanted to be able to pull you out if you crashed, didn’t want you to die while caught in a dream.”

“Kind of a moot point now,” Arthur pondered, looked out the window into the foggy world outside. If this was Limbo, choosing to wake was the only way. They were in much too deep, in more than one way.

Arthur stood from the bed with a sigh and looked around the bedroom, movements mechanical. It gave him an excuse to show his back to Eames and gather his courage. He could feel Eames watching him but Arthur was just bidding for time. He didn’t want to say what he had to anymore than Eames wanted to hear it, but –

It was time. Eames had told him everything. They’d mended their fences. There was nothing else to be done.

“You’re giving up much more than me,” Arthur finally began, standing by the bedroom doorway, as far as he could be while still in the same room. “It’s time for you to wake up. We’ve had our time to say goodbye, more than most people get. It’s got to be enough.”

“Arthur, no,” Eames stated, rolling from the bed to intercept him before Arthur could reach for his gun. Unperturbed, Arthur dreamt another into existence, but let Eames hold his arm down, let Eames get too close. “Don’t do this. We’ve still got more time.”

“I can’t let you stay here and become a vegetable out of some half-cocked romantic notion,” Arthur insisted, determined. The thought of Eames giving up his own life just because Arthur was losing his-

“Arthur, we’re here because I put us here,” Eames said, blunt as always. He looked angry, furious really, but Arthur knew him well enough to see the fear beneath it. “I already made the choice and I’m sorry, but it’s not your call. I may already fail to wake up from this or I may lose my mind entirely just by having gotten this far. Do you think I care?”

“You should care, you dumb fuck!” Arthur snapped, finally annoyed. He tried to back up a step, unsurprised when Eames followed the move. “You’re still aware; there might still be time to get you back up there intact. How can you ask me to forget that I might be killing you along with me? Or worse, letting you get stuck here for good without anyone else around?”

“The life I want to live is here,” Eames said, too serious, his hold on Arthur tightening to the point of pain. “That’s not your choice to make.”

“In this situation, it is!” Arthur pressed, horrified at the implications of what Eames was saying.

He pushed Eames back and tried to raise his gun, but when he looked at it, it was gone from his hand. Eames stared back at him, unrepentant and determined in a way that never bode well for Arthur.

“You have years ahead of you, Eames, you can’t spend them trapped in here alone or as a vegetable somewhere.” Arthur tried to sound reasonable. “I don’t want you to do that for me.”

“I’m doing it for me,” Eames said, staring at the hand Arthur had clutched around thin air like it was a live snake. “You can shoot me awake or you can kill me with your bare hands as many times as you like. I’ll just come back. You can shoot yourself awake to die up there, but I’ll find the way to follow you, Arthur, one way or the other.”

“You can’t put that on me,” Arthur breathed, terrified, but Eames didn’t waver.

“I’m not. It’s my choice,” Eames insisted and Arthur wanted to agree that it was, but this was too much. “I’m asking you to give me a chance to remember living a life with you, to live the life we both want.”

“You’re asking me to let you kill yourself,” Arthur bit out, disgusted and tried to turn away but Eames was already next to him, grasping his shoulders, his neck and forcing eye-contact.

“I’m asking you to let go,” Eames said, pulling Arthur down to lean their foreheads together, sharing the same air. “Let go and be with me. Just for a time, whatever little time we’ve got.”

“It’s too big a risk. You have to let me go,” Arthur murmured back, but he wasn’t even sure if it was an option. He didn’t know what would happen if he shot Eames out of this and Eames didn’t want to wake up. Arthur could get him lost for good, could sever his chances of ever getting out.

And Arthur wasn’t under any delusions of selflessness: he was terrified. Terrified of dying, of what it meant to give up on these moments, when he was actually being offered a chance to live with Eames for just a little longer, even if it was in a dream, even if it would all end abruptly. In here, he could still live. Out there-

“I would hate you,” Eames said, in a voice that tore at Arthur’s defenses faster than anything else, raw and ruthless, as if Arthur was the enemy. His eyes were hard, obviously remembering those frantic moments up there, where Arthur was bleeding out too fast. “If you deny me this chance, Arthur, I would never forgive you.”

“How can you say that?” Arthur tried to demand, but his voice sounded small and too quiet to his own ears. He just sounded desperate. “I didn’t ask you for this, it’s not fair-”

By then they were both crying, but they didn’t acknowledge it. Eames leaned in to kiss him, sweet and slow and it was perfect, despite the salt on their lips, despite everything.

Their stupid, illogical relationship that never should have worked out or even happened, had always defined them. They’d only ruined it by being afraid of how much they wanted it before. Now Arthur didn’t know how to let it go again.

“You’re such an asshole,” Arthur muttered, trying to mean it, trying to hate Eames for doing this to him, to them, but it was impossible. “You fucker, look what it’s come to. I don’t know what to do, how can I fix this, how-”

Eames kissed the words from his lips, his fingers wiping away the tears beneath Arthur’s eyes, his lips soothing and determined, easing Arthur’s open with care and relearning every corner of him, stealing his breath, his sense, taking everything and Arthur couldn’t even care. He wanted this. He hated himself for how much he wanted it.

When they finally pulled back, Eames’ eyes were calm. He held Arthur’s jaw up and traced gentle circles on his cheek, behind his ear.

“Stay with me,” Eames said, cajoling. “Let go. You just have to choose to stay with me.”

And put like that, there was really no choice at all.

 

 

 

“This place is unbelievable,” Arthur commented as they walked the streets outside their apartment. They were deserted, but the way they constantly shifted before their eyes gave the scene a sense of life.

“Coming from someone in our profession, that says a lot,” Eames agreed, squinting upwards to the top of a glass and steel building visible a few blocks over, incongruously modern next to all the Neoclassical European architecture they were mostly surrounded by. Arthur looked in that direction and grinned, recognizing it.

“The Higgins job,” Arthur admitted, drawing a laugh from Eames.

“Mal wouldn’t stop bemoaning the need for such an obvious phallic symbol.” Arthur remembered fondly the days when his friend was a smiling, strong-willed woman instead of a tormented shade of herself. “I don’t know what it’s doing here, by the way.”

“Overcompensating, maybe?” Eames guessed, making Arthur elbow him in the side a little harder than necessary. “Oh admit it, darling. You always wanted to be an architect and the Cobbs indulged you whenever they could get away with it.”

“I’m not bad at it,” Arthur defended himself without much heat, walking in the direction of the building. Eames followed him more leisurely, curious eyes running around every corner of their little world.

“Never said that, did I?” Eames said, placating, but when Arthur turned to glare he was smiling fondly at him. “You would have been brilliant. Even if the more artistic side of the craft could have used some work.”

“I had to accommodate the design for the mark!” Arthur exclaimed, waving a hand at the huge tower. “That’s hardly my usual taste. And Cobb did most of it; I just tweaked it where Cobb would let me.”

“That’s not how he told it,” Eames laughed. Arthur turned away with a huff, but he was hiding a smile. True, Cobb had drawn the actual plans, but Mal had sat Arthur down and gotten the ideas for the building from Arthur, telling him it was only logical given as he was the only one who’d lived for any length of time in New York. That was bull of course, the job had been simple enough that she’d used it to test what he could do.

His plans for the building had gotten the job done, been interesting enough that they’d been able to intrigue the real-estate magnate long enough to get away with their information cleanly. It’d been the first time Arthur had been able to bring the paradoxes he so admired into existence and the first time he’d openly impressed both his friends.

A short walk later and they were standing right outside the large glass doors to the building. Staring at it, Arthur was hit with such a strong wave of nostalgia that he was surprised the building didn’t collapse from it. He and Mal and Dom had walked through these doors, still riding the high of pulling off these million-dollar jobs with government backing, back when Arthur was still young enough to marvel every time he could dream of something other than war.

Eames walked up beside him and took his hand, not pushing to go inside when Arthur didn’t make a move to walk in. They stood there for a bit, looking at it like a display at a museum, until Eames pulled him away in silence with a gentle tug and a kiss on his fingers.

“Building from memory is dangerous,” Arthur commented when they were a few blocks away. The street they stood in reminded Arthur of Spain, with its cobbled winding streets leading up to the baroque church ahead. “That’s what Cobb always said- after.”

After Limbo, he meant. After Mal.

“Ariadne seemed to think he was full of it,” Eames said, tone clearly indicating that he’d thought the same much earlier. Arthur had to grin. “He built from memory most of the time, went under just to indulge.”

“Are you seriously using Dom Cobb as a model of what’s sane and proper behavior?” Arthur teased him, glad that he made Eames smile.

“I’m saying it doesn’t matter,” Eames said, squeezing his hand. “We’re building this world without even trying. If we get lost in it, we can just as easily tear it down.”

“You just want an excuse to dream up another grenade launcher,” Arthur grumbled, trying to hide his unease. They _could_ get lost in here. They could lose each other or ruin Eames’ chances of waking up. He couldn’t stop being afraid of that, Eames’ assurances aside.

“As if I need the excuse!” Eames exclaimed, then led Arthur abruptly into a building to their right, before Arthur could see where they were. They ran up some stairs and walked through a big wooden door without needing a key.

Inside was a home, sunny and huge, floor to ceiling windows highlighting an interior design worthy of a magazine spread. Arthur loved it on sight. Bookshelves lined an entire wall and the couches looked big enough for ten people, everything in earth tones that complimented the hardwood floors.

“Where is this?” Arthur said, looking around with wonder, noticing the books shifting colors and titles as he watched them. Outside, what was at first sunny nothingness, gave way to a bright green garden view that impossibly stretched out as far as he could see. “Wasn’t this a building in the middle of the city?”

“Have some imagination, Arthur, this is whatever you want it to be.” Eames shrugged, but Arthur could see he was also surprised as things changed to accommodate both of their preferences. When it settled, it was a strange mixture of Arthur’s dream apartment, magazine homes and well-worn details of homes Arthur had never been to, but that Eames was studying closely.

Their apartment in Prague hadn’t shifted like this, but it seemed that all the details they didn’t bother creating consciously would fill themselves from a blank canvas with barely a thought.

Arthur moved to explore a little, looking around the shelves. There were knickknacks from all over the world, only some of which he recognized.

“This yours?” came Eames’ voice and when he turned, Arthur found him holding a worn teddy bear with a blue coat.

“Yeah,” Arthur said, staring at it. It was the Paddington bear Arthur had had when he was four, which hadn’t had a hat since times immemorial, and that Arthur hadn’t seen since back when he’d lost-

He cleared his throat and reached out for it, trying not to notice Eames staring at him when he held it. It even smelled the same.

“Got into an accident a long time ago,” Arthur told him, smiling sadly and petting its fur. Then he set it down on the couch and moved to the shelves if only to avoid Eames’ curious eyes. There was no reason not to tell him. He just didn’t want to say.

“The bear or you?” Eames probed, always hungry for whatever bit of Arthur’s past he could dig up. Arthur constantly told him he’d have better luck just Googling him, but Eames had always been a fan of first-hand knowledge, the insufferable gossip.

“Both,” Arthur admitted, shrugging. The random book he picked off of the bookshelf ended up being a Dr. Seuss edition he’d had back then, which made him laugh. He’d always had a too-literal subconscious that Eames made fun of him for. “You know most of it, remember? It was when my dad died.”

Eames didn’t say anything but he did come closer from behind to kiss the side of his neck. Arthur shivered, shaking off the melancholy. When he looked back, the bear was gone, either his desire or Eames’ putting it out of sight.

“What are we supposed to do in here?” he wondered, moving things along. He was intrigued by the imposing black piano that had showed up near the windows, something that had no place in his own memories and had to have come from Eames. “That yours?”

“Certainly is,” Eames smiled against his skin. “Something you want to hear?”

“Surprise me,” Arthur said, letting Eames pull him over to sit next to him on the bench. He raised the fallboard with care then cracked his fingers, making Arthur roll his eyes at his drama.

“Patience, darling,” Eames grinned, drawing it out. Arthur watched him think, before his hands settled over the keys and started to play, gaining momentum as he got used to the rhythm.

Arthur’s musical ear was far from refined, so he let the melody flow over him, trying to place it. He gave up after a while, unfamiliar with the song, but recognition wasn’t necessary to appreciate it; it was beautiful, a light, soothing melody that made Arthur smile and forget about his earlier dark thoughts.

Arthur’s number one hobby had always been sitting down to watch Eames paint, either reproductions for his occasional museum heists or the originals he sold on the side. Music flowed from him with the same ease, it seemed.

Arthur sat back to watch him, indulging the simple pleasure of watching Eames’ strong hands move over the keys with the same confidence with which they handled his guns or created his forgeries. It was hardly a stretch to wonder what those fingers could do on his skin later on, hunger igniting a slow burn on his belly.

“I didn’t even know you could play,” he admitted when Eames was done, leaning in for a kiss that Eames was enthusiastic about returning. There was something smug in his expression, there every time Arthur admitted to being surprised by him. It made something soft and fond rise up in Arthur’s chest but he covered it with a frown.

“Don’t let that go to your head. I don’t go around digging for everyone’s musical proclivities.”

“Of course not,” Eames agreed amicably, grinning too wide. “Care to dance, then?”

“What, alone?” Arthur raised an eyebrow but Eames just shook his head and pulled him from the bench, leading him to the middle of the room like it was a crowded ballroom. Arthur stumbled in his wake, letting Eames adjust his posture and wrinkling his nose when he noticed he’d have to let Eames lead. “This works better if there’s someone else actually playing.”

“Really, Arthur, where’s your creativity these days?” Eames chided, deftly dodging Arthur’s attempt to step on him. Arthur was about to reply when he noticed a melody starting to play, and surprise had him turning to find the piano keys seemingly playing themselves.

“This is for us,” Eames told him softly, and he meant more than the music or the house or the moment, Arthur knew. He already recognized the melody coming from the piano and it made something lurch in his chest. He tried to hide it by resting his head in the hollow of Eames’ neck.

Eames took his hand gently, and placed the other low on his waist, not speaking as he started to move. The notes flowed smoothly, surrounding them, guiding their steps.

_Shall I stay?  
Would it be a sin?  
If I can't help  
falling in love with you_

Neither of them was a particularly good dancer but it was easy to improvise a slow sway. Arthur closed his eyes tightly and stepped even closer, until not an inch of space remained between them. Joined from head to toe, they moved gently as Arthur’s thoughts filled in the lyrics to the soft piano song. He breathed in Eames’ proximity, his warmth and the promise- the apology- in the music.

_Like a river flows surely to the sea,  
Darling, so it goes,  
Some things are meant to be…_

“You’re a sap, Mr. Eames,” Arthur murmured, feeling Eames smile against him.

“Can’t go wrong with Elvis, can I?” Eames said, pulling back to meet his eyes as the music played on. Arthur looked back, thinking it was perfect, having all of this back like it’d never stopped.

It was easier than being apart had ever been.

“What’s the answer, Arthur?” Eames asked, voice low. Their earlier conversation rose up between them, pending an acceptance Arthur wasn’t sure he knew how to give. Staying here with Eames was easy. But how could he let Eames pay the possible price alone?

Either way, stay or go, Eames would be at risk. Out there, Arthur would die and Eames would hate him for depriving them of more time. He’d self-destruct as thoroughly as he knew how, Arthur could see it. If they stayed and Arthur lived here- Eames could lose his mind. But it was Eames that had chosen this, had gotten them this far on the hope that Arthur would want the same.

And Arthur wanted it. Wholeheartedly.

“How do you even go about forgetting reality?” Arthur asked, like what he was accepting wasn’t monumental, like he was simply curious. “Bury our totems and hope for the best?”

“Always so literal,” Eames murmured, but his eyes shone in relief. He looked happy for the first time since they’d been here, like he hadn’t let himself believe they’d try this crazy plan of his. Arthur drank in the sight of it, burying the dread as deep as he could.

Eames wanted it, he told himself. Wasn’t giving in the kindest choice?

“Just keep your eyes open,” Eames said, smiling at him with open affection. “What we have is as real as it gets.”

 

 

 

Arthur found they could build things more solid than cities.

They built trust in each other by waking up together without ever going to sleep, merging into one under sheets that smelled like them and were just as easily clean again, ready for their bodies crashing into the bed, ready for them immersing themselves in each other, memorizing every touch and blurring them together in a haze.

They fucked feverishly, unable to stay apart for long. Eames clutched him too tight, the bruises marking his skin because Arthur wanted them there, a reminder. He still smelled like a hint of paint thinner underneath the clean, male scent of his sweat, his stubble still scratched Arthur’s skin red as he bit a path down to his navel. The passage of time slid away as they moved, trying to stave off a hunger that left them exhausted, too sore, thighs aching, muscles liquid from Arthur climbing on Eames, Eames holding them against the walls, Arthur sliding to his knees, Eames bending his legs.

They spent what felt like weeks inside, more intent on exploring their bodies and mapping each other inside out than in any world they could step out into.

Arthur rediscovered the curve of Eames’ jaw, the way his neck muscles would strain when he’d throw his head back, the cadence of the sounds he made when Arthur used his mouth. He made a game of relearning the taste, the feel of all of those details he’d deliberately forgotten, drunk in the heady feel of Eames’ abandon. He mapped the tattoos he hadn’t been there for until he could trace them by heart and in turn let Eames relearn his scars one by one, drawing the story from each one out of his skin.

They still fit together, aligning angles and making space for the needs of the other, matching rhythms, slowly remaking them. They held each other for hours at a time, long interludes of lassitude that they sometimes accompanied with food or drink, more out of habit than any real need. The rituals of their half-assed version of domesticity were comfortingly familiar.

Home had always been a foreign concept to Eames, who’d grown up in boarding schools and cold manor houses and spent his life in a collection of impersonal hotel rooms and convenient safe houses. Arthur, more prone to seeking stability than he usually admitted to, had somehow ended up showing Eames his own definition of the word: familiarity and comfort, well-worn things and people waiting for you like Arthur’s mother had always waited for him to visit. It hadn’t been hard to form attachment to places and things when Eames had been there to share them.

They’d both had houses in several cities, traveled together more time than they spent indoors anywhere, but it’d sneaked up on them, the idea they had an apartment somewhere just for them where most of Eames’ books ended up together with most of Arthur’s clothes.

In this world, their home was everywhere. No matter how far they traveled, by foot or dreamed-up vehicles, by the time they were ready to stop exploring their home was always around the next corner, Prague always waiting outside their window like a still picture hung on the frame.

Arthur didn’t understand how either of them could fall so comfortably into these bizarre co-dependant patterns without feeling the itch to get away, create their own spaces. But Eames never pushed to put any distance between them. If anything he pushed them even closer, like he was making up for every time they’d denied themselves the comfort of being together.

Other people weren’t necessary in their fantasy, they found. Eames had tried forging a few people at first, but they’d both found the ease with which he slid into their personas disturbing. It was overwhelming, just as effortless as building in this place was, and so Arthur asked him not to do it anymore, far more fond of Eames’ face than of anyone else’s.

As a result, Eames had never seemed more at home in his own skin or his own mannerisms. All those details he usually hid and adapted, creating some persona for the circumstances at hand, started falling away until Eames was simply himself. For Arthur, the transformation was like watching an actor step off the stage. He was sure not even Eames was aware of how many of his habits were constructed, easily discarded when the need to pretend was taken away.

For his part, Arthur couldn’t remember ever feeling this aware of his own needs and wants. His body felt loose, like a burden had been taken away the longer he spent without living on someone else’s timetable.

It should be suffocating, how deep the need for each other ran, but somehow Arthur could only breathe easier when Eames was within his reach, like this place was weaving them even closer together than they’d ever been. It was deeper than love, more basic even; when the entire world was ruled by their will, the greatest source of wonder was reduced to one another. Somehow Eames could still surprise him inside a world Arthur could bend in half with a thought.

But even that malleability was changing as the foggy confines of their world became more stable. They could travel familiar city streets without them shifting to a new landscape and most buildings had become fixtures rather than mirages that faded when they looked away. The days had stopped being eternal, nights creeping in with beautiful starlit skies and a shining moon. It made the place feel less unnatural, the coming of night bringing cool breezes and the reappearance of a spread of colors at every sunrise and twilight, the likes of which Arthur had almost forgotten could exist.

But in here, there was no time.

Anxiety would clutch at Arthur’s chest sometimes, whenever he let himself think about it. He’d wonder, as privately as he could in a place built out of their shared subconscious, how to measure it. He’d built clocks and watched their faces as minutes froze or rushed by without any logic. He’d counted the first few nights, but they came at odd intervals, the sun moving at its own pace.

It was only when Eames found him clutching his die, brought into being by Arthur’s insecurity, that they actually acknowledged it.

“Time was always an arbitrary thing, Arthur,” Eames told him, sitting next to him on their living room floor. He was splattered with paint, blue and green dots on his T-shirt. Arthur had been watching him paint something beautiful then had to leave the room when he remembered that no one else would ever get to see it.

“Not our time,” Arthur argued, thinking of his careful schedules, his plans. He could conjure up his moleskin in here if he really wanted it back but what would be the point of that? “I’d just like to know.” _How much time I have left_ he meant, but left it unsaid.

Eames frowned down at his hands, the slump of his shoulders making Arthur feel slightly guilty. He kept reminding them of everything without even meaning to. It was just the way his mind worked, clinging to details and facts.

His die rolled a different number every time he threw it.

“I don’t want to force you,” Eames said and Arthur looked up at him with a frown, because his voice was burdened with something dark. “But there’s no point in clinging onto something that will just make you miserable, Arthur. I barely see you smile. It’s better if we let go.”

“I’m trying,” Arthur told him simply, unsure how to do more. “I have, for the most part.”

“Except for this idea,” Eames smiled with little humor behind it. Cobb’s usual speech of the resilience of ideas made his statement loaded, like he was resenting Cobb’s influence even down here. “You can’t let go of the seconds tickling away. You keep waiting for the rug to be swept from under you instead of just having a life.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Arthur sighed, crawling closer to burrow into Eames’ side. Eames welcomed him immediately, pulling him close. The tense line of his body relaxed a little. “I’m afraid. It’s not a crime. I’m still happy to be here with you. It’s just hard to accept something is so out of our control.”

“It was always out of our control, is the thing,” Eames told him with an edge of frustration, the words buried against Arthur’s hair. “I know it’s hard. You’ve never liked how unpredictable reality can be, worse than dreams when you can’t fix them by being clever enough.”

“It feels like I failed,” Arthur admitted bitterly, easing himself up to look at Eames’ expression. “It’s like I’d be giving in. They fucking killed me, Eames. How is that okay?”

“It’s not,” Eames said, his look darkening. Arthur watched the transformation, fascinated by the depth of the fury in Eames’ eyes, the murderous intent so plain in his face. Arthur still forgot, sometimes, the kind of men they both really were out there. “It’s never going to be okay again, Arthur, do you get that? We all failed. Turns out we can’t outsmart being human.”

“We were the best.” Arthur tried to smile. “I suppose dying young comes with the territory.”

“That’s bollocks, Arthur, don’t you get it? The whole point is that dying has no place here,” Eames said, and Arthur knew he shouldn’t, but he still glanced at the die on the floor. It’d landed in two. “I just wish you could remember that.”

“Look, I know it’s unbelievably stupid,” Arthur confessed, grimacing. “But it’s just- I’m just _pissed off_. I’m angry that some inept asshole with a lucky shot could take everything away from me just by catching me off-guard once. It’s not fair. We’re better than that.”

“While I don’t think arrogance is your best look, I have to agree,” Eames said, smiling when Arthur half-heartedly hit him on the side. “But if it helps, being here is already a way of sticking it to them, isn’t it? The man who shot you is dead, I killed him myself. And we’re here. We’re stealing back all this time for us to live.”

Arthur had to laugh, even though he knew Eames was being earnest. Eames raised an eyebrow at him, looking fond and Arthur leaned up to steal a kiss, smile lingering on his lips.

“Good to know you haven’t lost your bewildering sense of humor,” Eames said when they drew back, perfectly serious. Arthur pushed him away with a huff but he was still smiling.

“Sorry, it’s just-” Arthur started, then waggled his eyebrows. “It figures you wouldn’t let anyone else steal the last word.”

“Not in this life,” Eames agreed, reeling him back in by his shirt. The next kiss was longer, more intense, their hands moving beneath the lines of their clothes to find bare skin. “You call the shots in here, Arthur. Nobody else does.”

“Nothing new there,” Arthur drawled but he pulled away before Eames could kiss him a third time. He picked up his die and held it, weighing it in his palm. He heard Eames sigh next to him, but didn’t turn to face him.

“I can’t help going back to it,” Arthur admitted, rolling it between his fingers. “It makes me feel more in control but it also keeps reminding me this place isn’t real. I don’t know how to have one without the other.”

“I can show you something that could help you let go,” Eames said, a tense edge in his voice that made Arthur eye him carefully. “But if you’re still putting faith in your totem now, it could make everything worse.”

“I don’t want to need this,” Arthur said, because he didn’t. His mind just wouldn’t stop worrying over it. When he threw it, the die landed on four this time. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“Here,” Eames said. He was holding out a handful of cubes. Red cubes. Surprised, Arthur took them, studying them. They were dies, identical to his, impossible to tell apart in the dream. The weight of each one felt different, off.

Uneasy, Arthur dropped them on the floor and reached for his totem, but it wasn’t where it’d landed. Eames was holding it and he threw it on the pile with the others before Arthur could stop him.

“No, what are you doing?!” Arthur snapped, trying to find it but his fingers slipped over the dice on the floor and he couldn’t tell the difference. They were toys, casino pieces, nothing to base any certainty on. “Eames, what did you do? Give it back!”

“It’s right there,” Eames said, staring at him. “Can’t you find it?”

Arthur couldn’t. He couldn’t. He tried tossing them but the numbers changed. One of the dice landed on five every time, but ten others landed on different numbers despite Arthur being sure they were loaded. One of them landed on six three times in a row, only to land a one next. The probabilities of finding which was one was _his_ without waking were- They were-

Eames tried to touch him but Arthur shrugged him off, staring at the dice, trying to think.

Arthur closed his eyes and concentrated, dreaming up a replica of his die into his hand. But tossing it just gave him a random number, same as it should do in a dream, and it was no different to the ten others on the floor. It made no difference. It would never roll like it should, like reality demanded of it, because this was the only reality now.

“I’m sorry,” Eames was saying when Arthur could hear past the roaring in his ears, when he became aware that Eames was clutching at him, hugging him close like Arthur would crumble into dust if he didn’t. “I’m sorry, Arthur, I’m sorry, but I had to. This is what we have now, don’t you see? This world is yours. You don’t need another. We can’t need another.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Arthur said woodenly, staring down at the die in his hand, at the numbers all of them had rolled. He wasn’t sure if he meant that what Eames had done didn’t matter or that the number of his totem didn’t.

They were here now. They were trapped in here.

None of it mattered, in the end.

 

 

 

The next morning, with the sun rising over the buildings they’d built and Eames in the other room, Arthur left their apartment and didn’t come back for a long time.

Arthur hadn’t planned it. He didn’t leave a note behind or an explanation. He simply put his shoes on and walked out, planning only to go for a walk, to think things through, but found himself wandering the city, looking for a hiding place.

Restlessness pulled Arthur farther, away from their shared buildings and the streets of their cities. He walked aimlessly, searching in vain to get away from what was familiar, trying to find a corner for himself but everywhere he went reminders of _them_ showed up, conjured by Arthur’s conflicted thoughts.

No matter what Arthur did the city just stretched out before him, endless, keeping him locked inside its confines.

Arthur spent hours, days, seeking for a way to isolate himself, to _think_ , but this entire place was their world and they were hopelessly entangled together inside of it, too rapidly becoming all the other had.

It was dangerous. It was insane, to lose themselves in it. How couldn’t they need more? How could Eames build his entire reality around someone who’d die and leave him with nothing?

This was precisely the reason why Arthur needed an out, some time to create, to _be_ just himself and not a part of Eames, to give Eames the time to get out if he wanted to, to find himself if he didn’t.

But the city kept locking Arthur in its streets, turning itself in circles in a bid to keep him close.

So Arthur dreamt bigger.

He stood still and consciously destroyed a path through stores, homes, skyscrapers and banks, tore down walls and ripped city blocks apart, feeling like he was tearing out a piece of his chest but dreaming, dreaming an exit, a world outside, an endless distance to travel through until there was one, until he found he’d walked too far to be pulled back.

It felt like it’d taken months but eventually Arthur found himself staring out at the sea.

Endless, vast, moving; it was an empty, barren shore but it was his.

It was beautiful.

Arthur built a house there overlooking the beach, with wooden planks painted light blue and worn furniture from his childhood inside, something Eames had never seen.

It didn’t help.

It was books, at first, then clothes, then all the rest of the things that had been in their apartment showing up unexpectedly. The pictures started appearing everywhere, both of them in the frames. Eames in the photos, his smiling face, and Arthur ached to be with him, to forget everything and cling on with all his strength. Arthur wanted at least to call him, tell Eames where he was- if Eames was still out there looking.

But Arthur didn’t do any of that. He stepped out of his house and let it burn down into rubble, melting with it all those mementos, all those desires that were bound to drive them both insane.

That was how Arthur found himself on a lonely shore, wanting something he knew was out of reach. Something he shouldn’t want.

Arthur sought it for a while, but couldn’t find it. The space around him was vast and empty and the loneliness consumed him. He walked for a long time but found only disappointment.

So instead of wishing to find it, Arthur decided to build it.

He built a maze to search inside himself and locked every door behind him, walking further and further in, up stairs that would turn on themselves and rooms that led you right back to the beginning. He explored every corner, every memory and every want but he never found the one piece he was missing.

Arthur walked past familiar and unfamiliar places, trying to remember the root of his sadness. He sought under furniture and inside cupboards but couldn’t find anything to fill the hollow in his chest. Hallways spread under his footsteps like a carpet, leading him into shops and museums and houses, all with no answers, all of them empty.

At first, familiar faces were only visible on the pictures hung along the walls. Friends, family and lovers all stared at Arthur as he walked by their likeness. But after a while they were roaming the same halls next to Arthur, talking to him when he needed them to.

Wandering through that maze, Arthur tried to remember, but all he knew in the end was that he’d left behind something important. Storms raged outside but Arthur built glass ceilings that locked away the rain.

“I wish you wouldn’t do this to yourself,” Mal told him, her hair pulled into a messy bun, dressed comfortably. Over her shoulder, Philippa waved at him, playing with her dolls. “What does it matter, what he did? You love each other enough that betrayal is but a smudge on the map.”

“You wouldn’t say that,” Arthur told her, cup of coffee in his hand, watching Dom in the yard trying to teach James to ride a bike. “If you knew what Dom did to you.”

“I know everything you know,” Mal said, confident and unconcerned. She was smiling. “You never asked Dom what he did because he is your friend, same as I am your friend. You couldn’t bear to think he could have done something bad to me.”

“But he did,” Arthur told her, a confession he’d been holding back. “I know Dom did something to you. He felt too guilty. He hurt you somehow, he killed you.”

“And you still love Dom.” Mal shrugged, combing the hair of Philippa’s doll. She was now wearing a black cocktail dress, horribly familiar. “Just as you still love _him_. And you’re scared, of course, you’re hurt. That’s perfectly fine. But you know that he was not the one to kill you, don’t you, Arthur?”

“No,” Arthur said, frowning down at his hands. They were empty now, no coffee, nothing. There was nobody over Mal’s shoulder, nobody outside the window. “No, he didn’t kill me. He saved me.”

“Then why are you angry?” Mal said, but when Arthur looked up she was gone.

“I’m not angry,” Arthur told no one, hugging himself. “I’m lost.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” his mother said and Arthur looked to her, needing the comfort. She touched his face gently, hands so small on his cheek, her eyes kind. “You’re not lost. You’re waiting for him but he already came to find you. Just let him in.”

“How?” Arthur asked her, but she had dissapeared too.

Arthur didn’t remember who he was waiting for but he knew he had to go to him. There was no time. The hands on the clocks wouldn’t turn and there was no time to grieve how still they were. There was no time left for regrets.

Arthur walked right into the center of his maze, an empty bedroom in a beautiful city that smelled of someone else. _He_ wasn’t in there either.

So Arthur sat down on the bed and let the walls around him crumble into dust, waiting for the missing man to find him, wishing away the loneliness.

 

 

 

When Eames found him, Arthur couldn’t understand how he’d ever forgotten him.

In repentance, Arthur let Eames crush him close and yell at him for as long as he wanted. He let Eames push him against the wall and he let Eames fuck him (he wanted Eames to fuck him, he needed him close, inside, deeper than he could possibly ever get, how hadn’t he known?) and he let Eames take him away to a beautiful city, bustling with people, that Arthur almost remembered.

Arthur let Eames take him home and believed every promise Eames made, every apology, because this, this was everything. All they would get. All they could afford to need.

 

 

 

When Arthur came back, things got better very fast.

Arthur stepped inside their apartment and found it perfectly preserved, like he’d just been away for a minute. And it could have been a minute or it could have been ten years, who could be certain?

The open windows let in the sunlight and a pleasant summer breeze stirred the curtains. Outside, there were no signs of Arthur’s destruction, of his escape. Inside, there were no clues he had ever been gone.

In their bedroom, Arthur found the bed unmade, covers tossed on the floor. He had to smile at how typical that was. Then he smiled wider, because he remembered that; Eames never making the bed, never picking up after himself if he could get Arthur to do it instead.

“You’ll have to fix that,” Arthur said with a vague gesture, aware of Eames shadowing his steps. Then he stripped off his clothes, ruined by dust, and let Eames stare after him as he walked into the bathroom. The shower was fantastic. It was even better when Eames slid in after him, hands hungry to touch bare skin, to claim it and paint it as his.

“I missed you,” Eames said, not for the first time since he’d found Arthur again.

Arthur knew he’d scared Eames with his absence but he’d always needed solitude to think. He couldn’t apologize and mean it, so Arthur turned in his arms, backed him into the wall and kissed him silent.

All thoughts of getting clean slid away from his mind and he gave himself up to the possessive clasp of Eames’ hands on his hips, his own hands sliding smoothly over Eames’ shoulders and digging in with his nails.

Eames fingers moved lower with intent, finding the muscles that’d welcomed him inside before, still hot and swollen from friction and too little patience. He touched the skin there too gently, apologetic, making Arthur hiss at the teasing contact on over-sensitive muscles. Arthur was in no mood for slow, pushing himself back, seeking more contact and Eames was easily swayed to comply.

The breach of those digits pushing in was slow but purposeful, a burning stretch that made Arthur arch up on his toes, crushing Eames further against the wall, his breath hitching. The water falling over them made finding a foothold difficult and Eames easily reversed their positions, pushing Arthur face-first against the slick wall.

“Spread your legs,” Eames said over the sound of Arthur’s moan. Eames’ fingers slid out for a moment, leaving him empty until he obeyed, only to come back much slicker, sneaking in a third digit with the others. “Wider, c’mon.”

Arthur tried, but his position was too awkward. Eames slid an arm around his waist to hold him steady, pushing them closer at a lean that forced Arthur to put his weight on his forearms. It made things easier. Arthur spread his legs then, wide as he dared, trusting Eames to hold him up.

When the scissoring digits inside him moved, angling for his prostate, Arthur’s knees wobbled. He tried to thrust back into the touch, increase the sensation, but he was effectively pinned there, forced to take Eames’ pace.

“Eames,” he pleaded, breathless, tensing his muscles around Eames’ hand. “More.”

Eames, the bastard, took his time. He spread Arthur open leisurely, making no move to touch his straining cock, drawing gasps and whines out of Arthur’s throat that he would never admit to making.

Eames thrust his own erection against the curve of Arthur’s buttocks, away from where his fingers were and Arthur writhed helplessly, with nothing to rub against and no way to move his own hands lest he topple them both, he sobbed his breaths out until Eames took pity on him, letting him at least move his hips back for a few unsatisfying inches.

“Please,” Arthur gasped, needing to move, needing to see, but he had to be allowed first and he knew it. When Eames didn’t answer, unusually silent, Arthur belatedly realized that Eames might be angry with him, that this might be his punishment for going away. “Eames, please, I’m sorry, please-”

“Please what?” Eames asked, voice cold and Arthur was too far gone to worry too much, but he tried to focus, tried to say the right thing.

“Touch me,” he said, but that wasn’t it and Eames didn’t relent, pushing all three fingers against his prostate and making Arthur groan too loud, the sound echoing in the shower stall. “Fuck, Eames, fuck me, please, I need you, please-”

It worked. Before he could finish, Eames’ fingers slid away and his weight was off Arthur’s back. He wasn’t given time to straighten, strong hands none-too-gently turning him around to slam his back against the wall, the arm that’d been around Arthur moving down to lift up his thigh without giving him time to balance.

Instinct made Arthur wrap both legs around Eames’ waist and that was exactly what he’d wanted, if the way he slid inside Arthur with no further warning meant anything.

The burn made Arthur writhe, tightening the grasp of his legs, his arms seeking purchase around Eames’ shoulders. Gravity did most of the job of pulling Eames deeper, Arthur pinned on his cock and again at his mercy, but he relaxed into the hold and let Eames lead the pace, content to be joined again despite his precarious position.

Arthur leaned his head back to stare his fill and found Eames looked wild and as undone as Arthur felt, his intent eyes not closing as he thrust his hips in. The angle was perfect, drawing Eames in to the hilt and stretching Arthur out, the touch on his prostate almost too much.

“There you are,” Eames breathed, sounding wrecked, but he was staring at Arthur like he’d found something amazing. The heat of the shower and the flush of sex were a good cover for the blush Arthur knew would have covered his face at Eames’ words, his reverent eyes. “My Arthur. You don’t get to leave.”

“I’m sorry,” Arthur sobbed, feeling sorry, not knowing why he’d left right then, when he had everything he wanted. “Eames, please. Touch me, please, I’m sorry.”

“You’re okay,” Eames said against his neck, lifting Arthur’s legs a fraction on his waist and improving his stance so he could lift Arthur up, straight off his cock, then carelessly let him sink down again, too deep, too slow, absolutely right. “You’re perfect, darling, right there.”

He raised Arthur up again, then bent forward so he could crush Arthur against the wall with his upper body, freeing an arm to finally, finally, slide a hand down Arthur’s front. Rough where his words were sweet, his hand jacked Arthur off in a few fast pulls, finger teasing the slit until Arthur lost all coherence, crying out at the ceiling and arching against the wall as his orgasm hit him like lightning, completely overwhelming his senses, his thoughts, tensing his entire body into one wonderful arch that buried Eames deeper, as deep as Arthur could take him.

He lost precious seconds, maybe minutes, to the pleasure, but Eames brought him back by thrusting into him, steady, controlled rolls of his hips that made Arthur groan, aftershocks shivering through him.

His limbs felt like lead, impossible to move, so Arthur melted against the wall, against the curve of Eames’ body and clung on, letting him force him open at whatever rhythm he wanted, opening himself up to it and tensing only enough muscles to make it good for Eames when he was buried deep.

“You’re mine,” Eames was saying, mindlessly repeating it. It sounded like reassurances to Arthur, like he was convincing himself.

“All yours,” Arthur agreed to his ear, bit the shell of it to make Eames listen. “I am, Eames. I’m yours. C’mon, let go. It’s okay, I’m right here.”

He didn’t know if Eames heard but he did finally let go of his control, thrusts going frenzied, desperate hands burning bruises onto Arthur’s hips, his thighs, and it was perfect. Arthur felt him come only distantly, riding his own high, made aware of it only by the bite on his shoulders, his neck, too out of control to be anything else.

He lowered his legs by degrees, his turn to hold Eames up as they breathed together, sweat immediately washed away by the still-running water. Too soon Eames was straightening up, pulling out with a wet sound and a twinge of pain that made Arthur wince.

Eames didn’t step far. He moved in immediately, kissing him hungrily, deeply, a promise and an apology both. Arthur welcomed him in, only too happy to remember how much he could love, could need this man.

“Welcome home,” Eames whispered, smiling against Arthur’s lips when he had to let up for breath. Arthur smiled back, chest heavy with love and regret and hope, a mix too tangled to rationalize.

They shut off the shower and barely made it onto the bed, all over each other again like they’d forgotten how to be apart.

Maybe they had. Maybe that was the point.

 

 

 

“Didn’t you steal that one for me?” Arthur asked, pointing at the painting in the far side of the museum’s left wing. It was a Paul Klee, boasting to be the original of Red Balloon. That was strange, since Arthur had the original hanging by their dining room table back home.

“I did,” Eames confirmed, walking Arthur to stand in front of it and squinting critically at the brush strokes. Arthur watched him, amused, waiting for the verdict. “This is one of my best, wouldn’t you say?”

Arthur laughed, pretending to examine the painting. He was honestly clueless when it came to technique, mostly just appreciated things from an aesthetic and subjective point of view, but Eames always said he had a decent eye ‘for a philistine’.

“I’d say it passes muster,” Arthur finally sentenced, trying and failing to find a difference to the one he stared at every morning. Except-

“Eames. Please tell me that you didn’t actually _sign_ it.” He despaired, unable to stop staring once he’d noticed. It was very subtle, just a stronger stroke around the lines at the bottom, emphasizing a sideways ‘E’ at the left of the painting.

“How else would they ever know of my brilliance?” Eames asked rhetorically, laughing at Arthur’s expression. “Oh come on, like they’ll ever admit they had an exhibition piece nabbed from under their noses. It was years ago! If they haven’t caught on- or at least admitted to it- by now, they’re hardly going to.”

Granted, Arthur only saw the signature because he was used to looking for signs of them on Eames’ paintings. The reproduction was otherwise flawless, as far as Arthur could tell.

“This was for my birthday,” Arthur said, phrasing the question like a statement. For some reason the circumstances of how the painting came to be in his possession were a bit jumbled. “My twenty fifth.”

“Hung it in your mantle while you were off in Quito,” Eames confirmed.

They hadn’t seen each other for a while, talking only on the phone as Eames was working a con in Osaka at the time. Arthur could remember being exhausted by a 12 hour flight, stumbling into his Marseille flat only to find his Kandinsky reproduction replaced by an original Klee.

“You couldn’t have stolen it then,” Arthur said, frowning. The Klee had been on a New York exhibition the whole time, and Eames had had no time to fly from Japan to the States and back. He technically couldn’t have been in France either, but Arthur knew he had contacts in Paris that could have helped him with the last leg of the gesture.

“Like I’d leave gift-shopping for you to the last minute,” Eames scoffed, and Arthur had to grin. It was ridiculous that they were standing in a crowded museum discussing art heists and forgeries but nobody around them paid their conversation any mind. They walked further down the row of artworks, exploring the expressionism exhibition that had gained a few new titles since the last time they’d been in here.

Frankly, the museum seemed larger every time they visited, but Arthur dismissed the ludicrous notion. Curators could do wonders with space when they had priceless pieces to show off.

“Think you could get me Matta’s Elle Loge La Folie?” Arthur wondered, thinking that canvas would look great in their bedroom. It wasn’t in this exhibition but location had never been much of a problem for Eames.

“I can get you whatever you want,” Eames promised him, wrapping an arm around Arthur’s waist and nodding amicably to the security guard by the door as they moved to head out. The man nodded back politely, paying more attention at the toddler making grabby hands at a Wilfredo Lam canvas than to them. Arthur smiled.

“Don’t get cocky, Mr. Eames,” Arthur teased as if he doubted it for a second. Outside the sun was shining in a bright blue sky, briefly blinding them both as they stepped onto the street. “I’ve got demanding tastes.”

“Don’t I know it,” Eames lamented dramatically, waving a hand at the city around them, as if he meant to point out the entire world. “You’re a hopeless perfectionist with a mathematical little head. Good thing you’ve got me to bring some life around here, isn’t it?”

“Certainly is,” Arthur agreed around a smile, meaning it. He couldn’t even remember his life before Eames, back when he was getting his thrills from building impossible dreams and stealing secrets without this man by his side, pointing out all the ways he was enjoying it wrong.

“There were rumors you were actually a robot out in the criminal world,” Eames informed him seriously, following his lead around the city. “Some sort of mythological analytical creature, roaming the underworld in three piece suits and slicked back hair. A new military prototype they said. They were even serious!”

“I know,” Arthur said, walking toward the Vltava River to continue their afternoon stroll. “I put those rumors out there.”

“Ha! I knew it!” Eames crowed, drawing the eye of a woman with a little boy, who glared at them in reproach. “Bouwmeester owes me a beer! And a proper, Dutch one too, not that piss you Yanks drink.”

“Piss isn’t ice-cold,” Arthur countered blandly, biting back a smile. “It’s warm. Like that shit you tried to force me to drink in Dublin. Don’t think I’ve forgiven you for that."

“You’re just sore ‘cause Mullan laughed at you,” Eames pointed out, sounding fond. “In his defense, he did apologize after you saved his arse from that hoard of bizarre goblin projections.”

“The big, strong former SAS was screaming like a little girl,” Arthur mocked, not at all above being petty. “You could invite me along to that beer debt, you know. I saved Bouwmeester’s ass on the Sawiris job, the least he could do is buy me a drink.”

Eames paused, studying him. Arthur stopped walking too, frowning at him but Eames just nodded distractedly, eyes sliding away.

“Sure,” he said, sounding oddly hesitant. “We’ll give him a call when he’s around.”

“Last I heard he was building legitimate skyscrapers out in Mumbai,” Arthur commented, shrugging the odd moment away when Eames resumed their walk. “At least as legitimate as laundered money gets.”

“Extremely legitimate then,” Eames said, still sounding a bit off. Arthur studied him from the corner of his eye but he only looked thoughtful, nothing particularly worrying about his expression. “Just wondering, Arthur; don’t you miss working?”

Arthur blinked, caught off guard.

“Why would I?” Arthur asked, puzzled that Eames would ask him that. “We just pulled off that job in Dagestan last week. I’m already getting contacted for something in Sofia, if you’re interested.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Eames said, seemingly shaking off whatever strange mood had taken him over. “You couldn’t keep me away.”

“Not for long, anyway,” Arthur teased, grateful when Eames smiled and settled his arm back around Arthur’s waist, the contact reassuring. “I’ve tried shaking you off before.”

“You won’t ever manage it,” Eames promised him, trying to sound ominous, but that was exactly what Arthur wanted to hear. “You’re hopelessly stuck with me.”

“What a terrible fate,” Arthur mock-sadly lamented, surprised when Eames pulled him around into a kiss, intense and filthy right in the middle of the street.

“I’m the lucky one here,” Eames murmured when they parted, an inch of space between them. Arthur kissed the words from his lips, pecking him lightly before pulling back to smile.

“And don’t you forget it,” Arthur taunted, a little unsettled when Eames just stared at him hungrily, like they were having an entirely different conversation.

“I won’t, darling,” Eames promised him, kissing his forehead. “I won’t forget it for a minute.”

 

 

 

Life moved on for them at a comfortable pace, the years doing little to wear them down.

They slowly got more settled at home, finding a peace like Arthur had never known before. They were familiar faces around the neighborhood, a known local couple that constantly got asked about “their other half” if they were ever caught alone outside. A college kid from their building even let them cat-sit when he went to visit his folks, trusting them like they were reliable people, like they were safe.

It never failed to amuse Arthur to accept, if only to watch Eames sneeze miserably for a day or two, and throw him accusing looks from under red-lidded eyes.

Arthur had suits made by a tailor on 9th street, to the left of a Russian library that Eames loved to visit. He mostly owned them for pleasure, simply because he liked them and Eames liked how he looked in the sleek lines of a well-made pair of pants. The older woman who made them had the best eye for measurements Arthur had ever seen outside of Fashion Week.

Mal teased him about his need to look sharp even at an informal dinner date, where the children would climb all over him and ruin the fabric with their grubby little hands, but Arthur didn’t mind. Mal wasn’t there to see the suits later, ripped in Eames’ hurry to strip them off his body. It was a worthwhile investment.

Eames spent most of his time at home these days, painting. Miles had pulled some strings to get him an in at an art gallery downtown and Arthur loved to find excuses to walk by the place with Eames. Every time he saw his pseudonym up there he’d stand up straighter with a flush of pleasure that Arthur was adept at encouraging.

The admiration they heard from other people whenever Arthur managed to drag him inside always made him blush, swearing he couldn’t exactly believe the praise when it came from Arthur.

“You’re biased,” he’d say but he’d still smile, bright and happy.

Arthur’s mother had one of Eames’ paintings in her living room, proudly displayed, and Eames still ducked his head when he saw it, which Arthur made sure was often. His mother adored Eames. She always chided them both for not visiting more often and told Arthur off for making her worry, even though there was no reason to.

Their lives were perfect.

Arthur tried to learn to play the piano for a time but was decidedly dreadful at it. Instead he bought one for Eames, thankful when it fit perfectly into their home, like it’d always been there. He fell asleep some nights on the couch, listening to Eames play late into the night, but he’d be woken by Eames’ gentle fingers pulling him up, heading for bed with the notes still dancing in his head.

They didn’t travel as much for work these days, though Eames still liked taking endless walks that would land them half across the world, it felt like. Yet somehow they never strayed far enough to lose sight of their home.

Arthur didn’t question it, used to Eames’ mysterious ways.

He was content to walk, Eames by his side, watching the world around them slowly grow mundane. Arthur didn’t mind it as long as they came back to fall asleep on their bed every night, curled together until it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

Everything was the way it should be. The way it’d always been.

 

 

 

One day, Eames took him to a beach.

Arthur thought there might have been significance to the place but he didn’t care to remember what it was. He walked with Eames onto the sand, holding hands, looking out at an endless ocean from the shoreline.

“I love you,” Eames told him when they got there, the sea roaring in their ears. It was the same thing he’d been saying for a while. Arthur loved him back so obviously, so deeply, that he didn’t feel the need to say it out loud.

But faced with Eames’ insecurity he said it anyway, just to watch the smile spread from Eames’ lips into his eyes, relief still lingering around the edges of his happiness when he looked at Arthur, even years after they’d last been apart.

They stayed there for a long time, just watching the waves wash in. The silence lasted until Arthur realized that Eames seemed to be waiting for something.

“What?” he asked, voice rusty with disuse. Eames smiled sadly at him and didn’t answer. Arthur hated that smile. He’d had enough sadness for a lifetime (and a lifetime was all he would get). “What are we waiting for?”

“If you heard music right now,” Eames said, incongruous as always. “Right now, on this shore, coming from nowhere. Would you know where to go?”

Arthur looked at him, at the lines of his face- were there more than before? - and thought only of a piano melody with no lyrics. He thought he’d like to dance to it, with Eames, but far away from here, where the sound of the ocean wouldn’t drown out the notes.

“We should go home,” Arthur said. “I’m sure we have records to play in our flat. Why would we want to hear music out here?”

“No reason,” Eames said, but there was something on his face that almost looked like heartbreak. “No reason at all, darling. Let’s go back.”

They did, pausing only long enough for Eames to toss something into the ocean.

“Just rubbish,” Eames said when Arthur asked. “Don’t mind it.”

Eames cooked them dinner that night and the wine was excellent, a Christmas gift from their downstairs neighbor. Arthur played them an old Elvis Presley record that had been his father’s and watched Eames smile, the beach forgotten behind them, too far away to matter.

 

“Sometimes I think I remember being someone else,” Eames said one afternoon, his deep voice pitched low, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted Arthur to hear him. Arthur looked up from his formulas with a blank look, trying to process that statement.

“What do you mean?” Arthur finally asked, completely bemused. “You’ve always been Eames.”

“But didn’t I have other faces, once?” Eames asked him, perfectly earnest. Arthur laughed, thinking it was a joke, but Eames was actually serious.

“How could you have more than one face?” Arthur wondered, bewildered. “Why would you want to? The one you have is who you are.” _And you’re perfect, exactly like that_ Arthur didn’t say, but he hoped his smile said it, he hoped his hands said it when he reached out and touched those beloved features.

Eames had aged well. He carried the years in a few more lines, a few more grey hairs, but his eyes were still youthful, still the eyes of that sharp-minded soldier Arthur had met a lifetime ago.

“I don’t want to look at anyone else,” Arthur said, perfectly honest. Eames smiled at him, obviously pleased, and kissed his fingertips.

Outside, it was a quiet day. Most days were quiet now, the other people hidden away somewhere. Arthur rarely needed them there, but sometimes Eames did, studying the others like it was a habit he didn’t want to break.

Arthur went back to his formulas, his perfectly aligned math that he’d taken to calculating; he couldn’t help looking for some elusive result that he wasn’t sure why he needed. He’d been at it for days, drawing graphics, solving equations, but he hadn’t found the number yet. It was an important number, one that Arthur felt he had lost, but he was sure he could find it again.

He looked back up after a time, looking for Eames, and found him in front of a mirror, making odd faces. He seemed to be concentrating on achieving something he’d forgotten, just like Arthur, so Arthur let him be.

Later, Arthur made them dinner and Eames accidentally spilled pasta on Arthur’s papers. Arthur looked at the red sauce spreading over his numbers, and shrugged off Eames’ apology.

“I think they look better that way,” Arthur said, which made Eames laugh and kiss him, like Arthur was being clever. It was the truth though. For whatever reason, Arthur let the red mess dry all over his numbers and forgot why they mattered, leaning into Eames instead, memorizing his face all over again, just in case he ever lost it.

 

 

 

It was a lovely day in the fall when Arthur first woke up feeling sick.

“You should have some tea,” Eames advised, bringing a mug to their bed and turning on the TV to a black and white movie they’d both seen before. “A bit of Sunday indulgence never hurt anyone.”

Arthur mouthed along to the movie’s dialogues and tried to ignore the start of a headache looming on his temples and a slight shortness of breath that made his chest ache.

His dreams had been troubled that night, a strange reel of violent images in disturbing technicolor. Arthur vowed not to eat sweets before bed again and cuddled up to Eames, determined to get better soon.

Sadly, it wasn’t to be that simple.

 

 

It was a few days later and enough time had passed that neither of them was worried about Arthur having suffered anything more serious than a cold, when the coughing started.

Slow at first, a small annoyance that Arthur muffled the sound of with his sleeve. He hadn’t been sick in so long that he’d forgotten what it felt like, the ache behind his eyes, the heavy feeling on his body that made it hard to move around.

Eames tried to tease that he was just getting old, but Arthur wasn’t sure that was all it was. It felt bad, somehow, something in Arthur warning him that it was worse than it seemed.

Arthur had never been a sickly person. It was strange to look in the mirror and find a pale ghost staring back, hollow-eyed and blue around the lips, like he hadn’t been breathing enough oxygen in his sleep. It was disturbing to lose his breath just by climbing a few stairs, or to wake up in the morning feeling more tired than when he’d gone to bed the night before.

The worst of it was that the cough just wouldn’t go away.

Arthur started a one-man battle against it, trying all the over the counter drugs that could attack whatever it was. Allergy medication came first, the easiest excuse for the cough, but the pills did nothing but make Arthur a little sleepy. He tried cough syrups next, trying several different brands in secret, but ended up chugging it so regularly that Eames caught on and took to following him around with a bottle.

It didn’t really help either.

Home-remedies didn’t touch it, honey and lemon tea only briefly soothing his aggravated throat. His mom tried feeding him grapes, but other than tasting good, they didn’t do anything to stop his coughing. She then suggested her medic but Arthur dismissed it, determined to find out what was causing it on his own.

He’d never liked doctors and she knew it, wisely choosing not to press but not sparing him her exasperated looks or the worried phone calls every other day.

Eames offered to take him to the hospital every time the coughing woke Arthur out of deep sleep, looking more and more worried, but Arthur told him no. He was pretty sure he was getting asthma.

The cough had gradually started to take an uglier sound, low and raspy. The tightness around his chest had slowly become a permanent dull pang around his ribs that disturbed his breathing.

Arthur tried hard to work through it but Eames seemed to just be waiting for Arthur to admit defeat before rushing him to the nearest emergency room.

It took him close to a month, but Arthur finally had to give in when he woke up one morning coughing up blood.

 

Nobody knew what he had.

Arthur knew. A part of him knew.

 

 

The day the doctors finally gave up, Arthur was mostly ready for it.

Eames wasn’t. He’d punched the doctor out and had been dragged from the hospital premises by security guards. Arthur had followed after the commotion at a slower pace, numbly holding onto the pamphlets he’d been handed about a variety of specialty centers that could maybe find out what was wrong.

What was wrong was that Arthur could scarcely breathe most of the time. He coughed blood at odd intervals, like one of the consumption patients from Eames’ Victorian novels. He’d lost weight, more than he could really afford to be without, and fatigue was a constant no matter how much he slept.

The doctors had tested him for everything Arthur had ever heard of and some rare African diseases only Eames seemed familiar with, but nothing came back positive. Not tuberculosis or cancer or asthma, nothing at all that made any sense. Arthur was fine. He was a perfectly healthy, perfectly fit man who couldn’t stop coughing up blood.

His lungs ached every time he inhaled, until Arthur had mostly gotten used to living with the pain. But it was getting worse. Every minute, it grew worse, pressure with no source cutting off his air flow.

 

It was a familiar sort of pain.

It triggered something, an echo of a memory that Arthur had lost, one which seemed to loom closer and closer to the surface the stronger the pain became. If Arthur tried-

 

(And he didn’t want to, but none of this had been his first choice)

\- he could recognize this moment, this fear, this hopeless grief clogging up his throat.

 

There was a familiar loss already clouding over Eames’ eyes.

 

Still, he didn’t berate Eames for chain-smoking through half a pack of cigarettes when they got home, desperately blowing the smoke out the balcony windows so it wouldn’t be near Arthur, who lay down in their bedroom and stared at the ceiling.

 

He couldn’t begrudge Eames anything, certainly not any last ditch attempt at denial he had running through his veins.

 

“You’re not going to die,” Eames said from the doorway, a world of conviction in his words. He was disheveled, paisley shirt askew and his stubble was rapidly becoming a full beard.

 

He was beautiful.

 

Eames’ bloodshot eyes were trained on Arthur’s, like he could send health into him by the strength of his will alone. Arthur knew that if there was anyone worth living longer for, it was Eames.

 

But desperately wanting something wasn’t enough to make it real.

 

Not for good.

 

(Not anymore)

 

“Yes, I am,” Arthur told him softly, a secret between them. “I’m going to die.”

 

Eames slammed the door behind him as he stalked off, but Arthur didn’t chase after him this time, listening to him roar and trash things in the next room. Arthur stayed still, savoring the words.

 

Arthur was going to die. Arthur was dying right now.

 

And he’d already known that, a long time ago.

 

Eames had known it once, too.

 

It explained a lot, Arthur thought, looking out into a stormy sky outside their open window.

 

Every hourglass ran out of sand. That was its purpose, to count down until the end.

 

And every time you dreamed, no matter how beautiful the dream, you eventually had to wake up.

 

 

 

Arthur was awake when the mattress dipped behind him that night. He was awake when arms that smelled like tobacco smoke wrapped themselves around him, tight enough to hurt, perfect as always.

“You’re not going to die,” Eames said in his ear but the strength in the words was gone. It was a plea, this time. “How am I supposed to let you go?”

“It was never in our hands,” Arthur told him, cursing the cough that followed the words and made Eames’ breathing hitch in turn. “You told me that, remember? Back when we knew?”

“What could I possibly know?” Eames murmured, raw and Arthur closed his eyes against the grief in the words. “I still had a lifetime with you to look forward to, didn’t I? Now what? We’re supposed to decide it’s been good enough?”

“No,” Arthur argued softly, slowly turning in Eames arms to see his face lit by the full moon outside. He looked older. Arthur didn’t know when it had happened, when his hair had gone so grey, when his face had gone rounder and softer with an age they didn’t really have. “Eames, we did it. We lived.”

“You don’t deserve this,” Eames told him, tracing Arthur’s face, the lines there, the marks of the time they’d spent in here and been happy, happier maybe than they could have been anywhere else.

“Nobody does.” Arthur smiled, leaned into the kiss when it came, tried not to taste the blood in it. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, you twat,” Eames said, his breath hitching around the sob he was repressing, tears shining bright in his grey eyes but not spilling over. Not yet. “This was for me. And you did it for me, staying here, forgetting it all. You gave me everything.”

“We were always going to want more time,” Arthur sighed, because he did. He still wanted more, wanted to stay, but there was no more time left to steal. “But you gave me years. So thank you.”

“I love you,” Eames told him, summing it all up- the regret, the loss, the warmth- in the feeling behind the words themselves, in the fact they were here at all, that they had been perfectly content to spend decades with nothing more than what they had built together.

Arthur drew him down into a kiss, answering without saying anything else. What could he say?

His chest hurt more now. It was getting worse so fast.

“I don’t know how to let you go,” Eames confessed and Arthur’s already heavy heart felt even heavier in knowing that they didn’t have a choice.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Arthur promised him, kissed his eyelids, his lips. “You already did everything you could. Just stay here with me. It’ll happen. It’s already happening.”

“Who knows,” Eames told him, holding him tight, too tightly. Arthur’s chest heaved to draw the next breath. “Maybe you’ll just wake up.”

Arthur laughed, soundless. He laid his head on Eames’ strong chest and listened to his racing heartbeat, clinging on as his own heart stuttered ahead, shutting down.

“You’re the one,” Arthur told Eames softly, drawing short breaths between the words. His tongue felt heavier.

 

It was time.

Eames’ arms tightened around him even further, trying to draw Arthur inside himself, trying to share his breath.

“I’d live for,” Arthur said.

Outside, the storm raged on.

Arthur closed his eyes to it and waited for death to come.

 

It came, inescapable, one after the next.

Die to wake up, wake up to die-

a paradox.

 

Arthur woke up and had seconds to see the sun illuminating piles of dusty rubble around him, feel the heat of the desert warm his cold limbs and think _Eames, what- where is-_

Before a hand was grasping his face, a familiar man hovering above him, young and beautiful and dirt-streaked, and it wasn’t blood rushing in Arthur’s ears but explosions in the distance, a memory crumbling along with everything else and Eames was speaking, Eames was saying-

“It’s okay Arthur!” Eames was shouting, his voice distant, echoing in Arthur’s ringing ears. “We’re going to wake up now!”

This was a dream, Arthur thought, trying to speak. But the pain, the pain was crushing him, it was all he could feel for a moment, for a too-long instant in which Eames was doing something, grabbing something-

And there was a second- just that long- to feel the cold steel of an M9 to the temple.

There was no time left to hear the gunshot.

 

 

 

Arthur woke up to the deafening sound of applause.

He was on a comfortable, luxurious seat and there was nobody else with him except for Eames, dressed in a tuxedo, waking up on the next seat over and ripping out his PASIV line to stumble closer to Arthur, to kiss his lips, to look him in the eye as behind him the curtain was falling closed on a collapsing stage.

Everything was shaking apart around them. It was a theatre and it was crumbling apart, but still applause sounded from everywhere and nowhere, a roaring ovation.

Eames hands were wet. They were wet on Arthur’s face and Arthur took a second to notice, to see that his shirt, his vest, his jacket, his seat, everything was soaked red and so was Eames, but Eames was tilting Arthur’s head up and saying-

“I love you,” Eames said. “We’re going to wake up now, Arthur. Just close your eyes. I’m right here with you. We’re going to wake.”

The floor fell from beneath them with the sound of a bomb going off.

They were falling.

They were still dreaming

 

Weren’t they?

 

 

Arthur woke up gasping.

He choked, tasting thick blood coating the inside of his numb lips. The pain was familiar, a welcome confirmation of reality. Only reality could truly hurt like this.

Pain might be in the mind but there was nothing subjective about death.

Eames’ hands were clutching real bruises into his paling skin. His hot breath on Arthur’s lips, his pleas, Cobb’s sad eyes just beyond Eames’ shoulder- it was all real.

A part of Arthur, a childish part, terrified and curled up tight inside his chest, wanted to doubt. But already the numbness in his limbs was turning into cold and Eames’ voice drifted in and out of hearing range, a strange echo in his ears.

“Darling,” he was saying, repeating it, more sacred than a prayer. No apologies, Arthur was pleased to hear. No vows either, but Arthur could see them, etched into the grief in Eames’ eyes.

“Just one more time,” Eames was saying, like it was still a dream, like they’d wake up from this one too. “I’m right here with you, it’s okay.”

Arthur couldn’t speak, his chest collapsing on itself, crushing his lungs and stealing his air, his life, but Eames had already heard the goodbyes from his lips.

The world around him was dimming around the edges, a dark shadow clinging to his lashes every time he blinked. His lids got heavier with each try, but these, these were his real seconds, dripping away.

He half-smiled when he felt the familiar weight of his die being set in his hand, Eames’ fingers wrapping around his stiff hand and curling around the small cube. Eames’ promises, a half-remembered forever ago were brought to the fore of his mind with the gesture.

It was a forever Arthur couldn’t help but wish had been real for them.

Je’ne regrette rien, he thought, looking into Eames’ red, wet eyes and memorizing their color, their warmth, their heartbreak, until his own eyes couldn’t stay open, until the black stole them away.

Arthur felt his fingers let go of his die, felt a kiss on his lips and thought--

 

 

 

The die stopped rolling.

Arthur didn’t wake up.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you have a minute, please leave a comment here or [at the original post ](http://sin-of-pride.livejournal.com/140524.html#cutid1). You can download the soundtrack for this story [here](http://sin-of-pride.livejournal.com/139353.html#cutid1).
> 
> Written for the second round of the Inception Big Bang challenge, completed in November, 2011 with 37.700 words in total. A big thank you to my amazing betas adelaide_rain and laria_gwyn.


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